Questioning Quotes
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The questioning spirit is the rebellious spirit. A rebellion is always either a cloak to hide a prince, or the swaddling wrapper of a new rule.
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More Questioning Quotes
Nothing has raised more questioning among my critics thanthese wordsnoble, thegrand style? Ithink it will be found that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.
Matthew Arnold— 1862 On Translating Homer; Last Words.
Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning.
werner heisenberg— 1959 Physics and Philosophy.
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back; Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lacked any thing.
George Herbert— 'Love', collected in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (published posthumously,1633).
The constant questioning of our values and achievements is a challenge without which neither science nor society can remain healthy.
— Nobel Prize Banquet Speech, December 10, 1975.
Ideas worth questioning: "Being an artist is a job for life."
brian eno— June 25, 1995, p. 140
[David] Stern's version of what has been going on behind closed doors has of course been disputed, but his efforts were typical of a commissioner who has always seemed eager to be viewed as some kind of modern plantation overseer, treating NBA men as if they were his boys. It's part of Stern's M.O., like his past self-serving edicts on dress code and the questioning of officials. His moves were intended to do little more than show how he's the one keeping the hired hands in their place.
— Golliver, Ben (October 19, 2011). "Bryant Gumbel evokes slavery in David Stern rant". CBSSports.com (CBS Interactive).
— Gumbel on David Stern's handling of the 2011 National Basketball Association lockout.
We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
werner heisenberg— This has also appeared in the alternate form: "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."
Only those of us, I think, who were born under Queen Victoria know what it feels like to assume, without questioning, that England is permanently top nation, that foreigners do not matter, and that if the worst comes to the worst, Lord Salisbury will send a gunboat.
ronald knox— God and the Atom (1945). London: Sheed & Ward, pp. 53–54
Respect authority while questioning it.
randy pausch— Presentation placard
The university is well structured, well tooled, to turn out people with all the sharp edges worn off, the well-rounded person. The university is well equipped to produce that sort of person, and this means that the best among the people who enter must for four years wander aimlessly much of the time questioning why they are on campus at all, doubting whether there is any point in what they are doing, and looking toward a very bleak existence afterward in a game in which all of the rules have been made up, which one cannot really amend.
mario savio— "An End to History," Humanity (December 1964)
Our mind, by virtue of a certain finite, limited capability, is by no means capable of putting a question to Nature that permits a continuous series of answers. The observations, the individual results of measurements, are the answers of Nature to our discontinuous questioning.
erwin schrödinger— As quoted in Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989) by Walter Moore
In reality, a person questioning the existence of the Satanic conspiracy is merely pointing out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. In that case, one can understand why the emperor's tailors get upset and suggest the person doing the pointing is a tool of the devil. Then the question comes down to one of whether the crowd will believe the evidence they have before them, or if they will buy into the tailors' fantasies.
michael a. stackpole— Stackpole. "The Pulling Report". Retrieved on 2007-05-27.
Art, if it is successful in the task of questioning reality, if it is good painting and not merely a performance of dexterity, will be an affirmation of God.
patrick swift— Italian Report (1955)
If hell has no answer for the questioning dead, it is not because it refuses to answer (for rigorous, alas, in observance, is the imperishable fire), but it is because hell has nothing to say, will say nothing eternally.
Georges Bernanos— p.42 (La joie (Joy) 1929)
As he had so many times before, Taleswapper addressed a few silent words to God, which always came down to this question: Why do you put us to so much trouble, when it all comes to naught in the end?...And, as usual, God had nothing much to say to Taleswapper when his questioning was done.
orson scott card— Chapter 15 (Red Prophet (1988))
This will of Stirner’s, this restless probing of all given knowledge, this endless questioning, and the continuous bending towards new understanding, …
john carroll— p. 107 (Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974))
The biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power . It incites to "counterpower," to "positive" criticism , to an irreducible dialogue (like that between king and prophet in Israel ), to antistatism, to a decentralizing of the relation, to an extreme relativizing of everything political, to an anti-ideology, to a questioning of all that claims either power or dominion (in other words, of all things political), and finally, if we may use a modern term, to a kind of " anarchism " (so long as we do not relate the term to the anarchist teaching of the nineteenth century).
jacques ellul— The Subversion of Christianity (1986). p. 116
Knowledge grows, but human beings remain much the same. Belief in progress is a relic of the Christian view of history as a universal narrative, and an intellectually rigorous atheism would start by questioning it.
john n. gray— "The atheist delusion," The Guardian (2008-03-15)
We are questioning more than the philosophy behind our dependence upon limited and limiting systems. We question the power structures that have grown up around such systems.
frank herbert— Without Me, You're Nothing: The Essential Guide to Home Computers (1981), co-written with Max Barnard
The nearer you come to God, the less you are disposed to questioning and reasoning. When you actually attain Him, when you behold Him as the reality, then all noise, all disputations, come to an end.
ramakrishna— p. 153 (Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960))
The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return ...
gore vidal— p. 280 (Matters of Fact and Fiction : Essays 1973 - 1976 (1978))
I'm not questioning your powers of observation, I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.
— "V" in V for Vendetta (2006) based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore.
Art if it is successful in the task of questioning reality , if it is good painting and not merely a performance of dexterity, will be an affirmation of God .
— Patrick Swift, in PS -- of Course: Patrick Swift, 1927-1983, Gandon Editions, 1993, p.216
There was not one [abortion practitioner] who at some point in the questioning did not say 'This is murder.'
— Magda Denes, abortion advocate, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, discussing two years of research done for her 1978 book In Necessity and Sorrow; Life and Death Inside an Abortion Clinic.
There is a difference between questioning policy and questioning motives. [...] no one should poison the public square by attacking the patriotism of opponents [...] Let me say it plainly: I not only concede, but I am convinced that President Bush believes genuinely in the course he urges upon us.
— Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002 [14]
questioning the status quo can result in banishment, imprisonment, ridicule or being burned at the stake, depending on your era, your locale, and the sacred cows you wish to butcher.
gene spafford— The Pursuit of Knowledge, from Genesis to Google
questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.
— Samuel Johnson, reported in James Boswell, Life of Johnson (1776).
