Quotes About Inquiry

And it illustrates a profound observation by E. A. Burtt: [I]f he be a man engaged in any important inquiry, he must have a method, and he will be under a strong and constant temptation to make a metaphysics out of his method, that is, to suppose the universe ultimately of such a sort that his method must be appropriate and successful. 19

Science isn't just for scientists - it's not just a training for careers.

The central question is simply put: What did the president know and when did he know it?

Anything you want to know, you ask the characters.

I'm not usually the guy who believes in aliens, UFOs or superstitions.

I look at a lot of artists. I'm inspired by - I suppose I shouldn't say 'inspired,' but it's not really influenced. I am inspired. Art comes from art.

The method of exposition which philosophers have adopted leads many to suppose that they are simply inquiries, that they have no interest in the conclusions at which they arrive, and that their primary concern is to follow their premises to their logical conclusions.

I can never say 'why' about anything I do. I suppose I can say 'how' and 'when' and 'what.' But 'why' is impenetrable to me.

I have always been the kid who's asked 'Why?' In my faith, you're just supposed to have faith. But I was always like 'why?'

In my view, the government has ample justification to inquire about citizenship status on the census and could plainly provide rationales for doing so that would satisfy the Supreme Court.

There's a richness that reading gives you, an opportunity to probe more than any other medium I know of. Reading is about not being content with the surface.

You can have all the information you want in the world. If you don't have the people raising questions and looking beneath the surface, and people being paid to do this, you're not going to find the answers.

I have always wanted to know what's going on under the surface.

One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.

The pursuit of knowledge, brother, is the askin' of many questions.

It was one of the mixed blocks over on Central Avenue, the blocks that are not yet all Negro. I had just come out of a three-chair barber shop where an agency thought a relief barber named Dimitrios Aleidis might be working. It was a small matter. His wife said she was willing to spend a little money to have him come home.

I love a question I can't answer. It keeps things interesting, even after so many years.

He studied his two friends, taking note of their freshly bruised countenances. 'All right. What happened?

Philosophical thinking that doesn't do violence to one's settled mind is no philosophical thinking at all.

Quite often we are led to aporia, an impasse, unable to proceed a step further. Socrates is almost always there, but even he is only a supporting character. The starring role is given to the philosophical question. It is the philosophical question that is supposed to take center stage, cracking us open to an entirely new variety of experience.

His relevance derives overwhelmingly from the questions he asked and from his insistence that they cannot be easily dispensed with in the ways that people often think. One of the peculiar features of philosophical questions is how eager people are to offer solutions that miss the point of the questions.

Answers? Forget answers. The spectacle is all in the questions.

What is it precisely, that they are doing when they are doing science. Are they refining their instruments for observation or discovering new aspects of reality?

the activity of posing scientific questions prematurely is the most useful thing of which philosophy can be accused.