Quotes About Inquiry

Books should always be open.

It's the stupid questions that have some of the most surprising and interesting answers. Most people never think to ask the stupid questions.

Evil does not question itself. Only Hope questions itself.

A recent article in the New York Times, "Google, Tell Me. Is My Son a Genius?," pointed out that parents today are 2.5 times as likely to ask online "Is my son gifted?" than "Is my daughter gifted?" and similarly 2.0 times as likely to inquire "Is my daughter overweight?" as they are for a son.

Leonardo was a doer. He painted, of course, but he also went into the mountains to examine rocks and fossils and to the tidal marshes to look at the wings and flying habits of dragonflies. He took apart machines to see how they worked and took apart humans to the same end. He recorded all of his discoveries in what amounted to about thirteen thousand pages of notes and drawings.

Before students leave, I ask for an exit ticket. I have students record on a sticky note one question they have about the book.

After about four minutes of modeling what I want students to do on their own, I release the class to choose an article for themselves that they think will address a question they have. Students head to the table at the front of the room where the articles are arranged.

Anyone who doesn't have a question, meet me at the table in the front.

That's what teachers get paid for, isn't it? How am I supposed to know when I don't get something? I'm just a kid.

There is nothing in man or nature that does not ask questions.

She supposed she could Google, but she preferred to wonder.

Obviously not," said Pettigrew, beginning to feel like a participant in one of Plato's dialogues when Socrates really got going.

In other words the little piece of polished wood had become one of her treasures. Sometimes she took it out and held it in her hand and thought about the man who had made it, and wondered what he had looked like; (she had such a very hazy idea of history that she imagined him shaggy and attired in the skin of a bear). And she wondered how the arrow had got broken and where the other piece of it could be . . . but although she searched assiduously, high and low, she never found it.

Were you really at school with Mums?' she inquired, fixing Zilla with wide-open eyes. 'Mums said you were—but you look much too old.' Zilla was displeased and showed it; she was not inured to home-truths delivered by the young and innocent

She had begun to realise that these people used the English language in a way of their own. They did not ask a question in a straightforward manner but merely made an observation with a questioning inflection in their voices; they never answered a question with a plain yes or no but preferred to answer it with another question.

Who's Heinz and what's an accordion?" -Spader

For me, there are no answers, only questions, and I am grateful that the questions go on and on. I don't look for an answer because I don't think there is one. I'm very glad to be the bearer of a question.

Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

We have made many glass vessels... with tubes two cubits long. These were filled with mercury, the open end was closed with the finger, and the tubes were then inverted in a vessel where there was mercury.

National languages are all huge systems of vested interests which sullenly resist critical inquiry.

The one thing that 'Via Dolorosa' has is no opinions. To me, curiosity is 50 times as valuable as opinion.

Whether it's via the monstrous or the paranormal, horror actually can really get at some of the most fundamental human questions.

Raised on Bill Nye videos, LEGOs, and CD-ROMs of dinosaurs, I was a lump of nerdy clay waiting to be molded. 'Mythbusters' came to me at a critical time, and it transformed me into who I am today.

When we engage people across ideological divides, asking questions helps us map the disconnect between our differing points of view.