What kind of a fucking question is that? You know we are all going to be real glad when we get rid of you, Somerset, you know that? It’s always these questions with you. Did the kid see it? Who gives a fuck. Se7en 1995 starring Brad Pitt & Morgan Freeman & Kevin Spacey & Gwyneth Paltrow & Richard Roundtree & Richard Schiff & R Lee Ermey & Mark Boone junior & John Cassini & Reg E Cathey et al, director David Fincher, rozzer to Freeman
No questions. What you don’t know can’t hurt you. The Thomas Crown Affair 1968 starring Steve McQueen & Faye Dunaway & Paul Burke & Jack Weston & Gordon Pinsent & Biff McGuire & Yaphet Kotto & Addison Powell et al, director Norman Jewison
Answer the questions and you won’t get hurt. Union Station 1950 starring William Holden & Nancy Olsen & Barry Fitzgerald & Lyle Bettger & Jan Sterling & Allene Roberts & Herbert Heyes & James Seay & Parley Baer & Ralph Sanford et al, director Rudolph Mate, Calhoun
I have never understand the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to any question. Star Trek s1e24: This Side of Paradise, Spock to Layla
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
Rarely is the question asked, Is our children learning? George W Bush, South Carolina January 11th 2000
It is not shameful to ask questions. Mary Starrett, Constitution Party
But these are foolish things to all the wise,
And I love wisdom more than she loves me;
My tendency is to philosophise
On most things, from a tyrant to a tree;
But still the spouseless virgin Knowledge flies,
What are we? and whence come we? what shall be
Our ultimate existence? What’s our present?
Are questions answerless, and yet incessant. Lord Byron
A prudent question is one half of wisdom. Francis Bacon
It was absolutely marvellous working for [Wolfgang] Pauli. You could ask him anything. There was no worry that he would think a particular question was stupid, since he thought all questions were stupid. Victor Weisskopf
‘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
So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being. Franz Kafka
Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing. Euripides
Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. Voltaire
Ignorance never settles a question. Benjamin Disraeli, speech House of Commons 14 May 1866
The men who make power make an indispensable contribution to the nation’s greatness; but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable. Especially when that questioning is disinterested. For they determine whether we use power or power uses us. John F Kennedy
We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified – how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know. Richard P Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P Feynman
It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority. Benjamin Franklin
Ask no questions and hear no lies. Late 18th century proverb, variations
There are two sides to every question. Early 19th century proverb
Once you start asking questions, innocence is gone. Mary Astor, attributed
Answer my question! The question, jerk! John McEnroe to umpire
Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything. Ernest J Gaines
Can’t you ask nothing but questions? Shane 1953 starring Alan Ladd & Jean Arthur & Van Heflin & Brandon deWilde & Jack Palance & Ben Johnson & Edgar Buchanan & Emile Meyer & Elisha Cook & Douglas Spencer & John Diekes & Ellen Corby et al, director George Stevens, Joe Starrett
What’s the answer? ... What’s the question? … Gertrude Stein?
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
Those are two hypo-rhetorical questions. George H W Bush 1988
Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen. It is assuming a superiority. Samuel Johnson
The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself. John Fowles, The Magus
The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood. Otto von Bismarck
Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement. Ronald Reagan
Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions. T S Eliot, The Rock, 1934
‘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
The first trick of asking questions is to determine if your question is a good one. Just because a question has never been asked does not make it good. Smart people have been asking questions for quite a few centuries now, so many of the questions that haven’t been asked are bound to yield uninteresting questions … if you can overturn the conventional wisdom – then you may have some luck. Steven D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner, Freakonomics
‘You won’t be surprised, I am sure, if I don’t ask any questions … If we start asking questions on these facts we will only irritate the judge and bore the jury.’ John Mortimer, Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders, learned leader
The question is not whether we will be extremists but what kind of extremists we will be. Martin Luther King
Are we alone in the universe? It’s perhaps the biggest question ever asked. Martin Rees, Aliens: The Big Think, BBC 2016
I was never aware of any other option but to question everything. Noam Chomsky
Well, I’m not sure The New York Times was consciously trying to trivialise me, but the effect of it is to put everything in the same category as the gossip you read in the magazines you pick up at supermarket counters. I was asked, for example, why I thought there were so many euphemisms for genitalia. It’s not a serious question. Whatever the purpose of such a tone is, the effect is to make it appear that anyone who departs from orthodox political doctrine is in some ways laughable. Noam Chomsky
As any researcher knows, asking the right questions is often the hardest part of the task … There is no shortage of wrong questions and in fact they come in many varieties. Noam Chomsky, lecture ‘Asking the Right Questions’, Youtube 1.58.17