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The truly educated become conscious. They become self-aware. They do not lie to themselves … Thought is a dialogue with one’s inner self. Those who think ask questions, questions those in authority do not want asked. They remember who we are, where we come from and where we should go. They remain eternally skeptical and distrustful of power. And they know that this moral independence is the only protection from the radical evil that results from collective unconsciousness. The capacity to think is the only bulwark against any centralized authority that seeks to impose mindless obedience. There is a huge difference, as Socrates understood, between teaching people what to think and teaching them how to think. Chris Hedges, Why the United States is Destroying Its Education System, 2011
The [tobacco] industry had realized you could create the impression of controversy simply by asking questions. Naomi Oreskes, ‘Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming’
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. Author unknown
Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a simple yes or no answer. Dentist quotes
Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no lies. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
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 s3e4: The Moral Dimension, BBC 1982
There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths. Carl Sagan
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
Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a mincer and eat blackberries? a question not to be asked. William Shakespeare, I Henry IV II iv 454
To be, or not to be – that is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? – To die – to sleep –
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die – to sleep –
To sleep! Perchance to dream. Aye, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office...’ William Shakespeare, Hamlet III i 56-73
To be or not to be. That’s not really a question. Jean-Luc Godard
Only Reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open. Clive Bell, 1881-1964, English art critic
The essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer. Jacob Bronowski
It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, BBC 1973
You just keep pursuing question after question after question. Beautiful Minds: Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, BBC 2010
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
The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions. Claude Levi-Strauss
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
They did teach us how to ask the right questions. Jim Al-Khalili, Science & Islam: The Empire of Reason, BBC 2009
For the first time I believe Science has pushed past Religion and Philosophy in daring to tackle this most fundamental of questions. Jim Al-Khalili, The Secret Life of Chaos BBC 2010
Giant telescopes are being built all over the world which scientists hope will answer some of the oldest and most profound questions humans have ever asked. Jim Al-Khalili, Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World V: Telescope, BBC 2019
It is not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer. Albert Einstein
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning. Albert Einstein
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science. Albert Einstein
Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. Janis Joplin
Back in 1960 Frank Drake went about creating an equation that would answer the big question once and for all. Horizon: Are We Alone in the Universe? BBC 2008
The philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen
Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy 1912
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good. ibid.
The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them. Anton Chekhov