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All religion is a foolish answer to a foolish question. Peaky Blinders s3e3, BBC 2016
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. Author unknown
The essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer. Jacob Bronowski
The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty damn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty – some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. Richard Feynman, The Value of Science 1955
One thing is that I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs, in different degrees of certainty, about different things. But I’m not absolutely sure of anything and of many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit, if I can’t figure it out, then I go onto something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me. Richard Feynman, interview BBC Horizon 1981
The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions. Claude Levi-Strauss
We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good. Carl Sagan
The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems. G W Allport
If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time 1988
Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. Janis Joplin
It is certainly an answer. Murder on the Orient Express 1974 starring Albert Finney & Lauren Bacall & Martin Balsam & Ingrid Bergman & Jacqueline Bisset & Sean Connery & John Gielgud & Wendy Hiller & Anthony Perkins & Venessa Redgrave & Richard Widmark & Michael York et al, Poirot
Here is the simply answer; there is also a more complex one. ibid.
Rule of Acquisition #208: Sometimes the only thing more dangerous than the question is the answer. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s5e20: Ferrengi Love Songs, Grand Nagus & Quark
Never answer the question that is asked of you; answer the question you wish had been asked of you. Robert S McNamara, The Fog of War 2003, director Errol Morris, music Philip Glass
I am not bound to please thee with my answer. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice IV i 65
But answer made it none. William Shakespeare, Hamlet I ii 215
Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth. Job 40:4
A soft answer turneth away wrath. Proverbs 15:1
A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer. Bruce Lee
Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing. Euripides
The shortest answer is doing the thing. Ernest Hemingway
Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. Voltaire
The reason I talk to myself is that I’m the only one whose answers I accept. George Carlin
‘Exactly!’ said Deep Thought. ‘So once you do know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.’ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers. Brian Greene
A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer. Bruce Lee
I’m for mystery, not interpretive answers ... The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer. Ken Kesey
Sir Humphrey: I strongly advise you not to ask a direct question. It might provoke a direct answer.
Jim: It never has yet. Yes, Minister: The Moral Dimension s3e4, BBC 1982
What’s the answer? ... What’s the question? … Gertrude Stein
Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer. Muhammad Ali
Solutions are not the answer. Richard Nixon
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you can call him a man? ...
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind. Bob Dylan, Blowin’ in the Wind 1962
‘What are you waiting here for?’ asked K courteously. But this unexpected question confused the man which was the more deeply embarrassing as he was obviously a man of the world who would have known how to comport himself anywhere else and would not lightly have renounced his natural superiority. Yet in this place he did not know even how to reply to a simple question and gazed at the other clients as if it were their duty to help him, as if no one could expect him to answer should help not be forthcoming. Franz Kafka, The Trial p56
When Levin thought what he was and what he was living for, he could find no answer to the questions and was reduced to despair; but when he left off questioning himself about it, it seemed as though he knew both what he was and what he was living for, acting and living resolutely and without hesitation. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions. Edgar Cayce
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions – as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all. Friedrich Nietzsche
Petitions & Protests: No, they are not the answer. But they can serve a practical purpose on the way to a real answer. The Corbett Report: Are Petitions & Protests the Answer? James Corbett online 2022
A mother says goodnight to her child not knowing it’s the last time. By morning the little body has died. Here in the UK a child a week dies unexpectedly and without explanation. So why are there no answers when their child dies without warning? Panorama: Sudden Child Deaths: The Search for Answers, BBC 2024