Questioning Quotes

I hope you find great value in these Quotes about Questioning from my large collection of inspirational quotes and motivational sayings.

Remain in wonder if you want the mysteries to open up for you.
Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning.
Questioners sooner or later end up in a library.
Questioners sooner or later end up with scriptures,
because scriptures are full of answers.
And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder.
- Osho

Everyone has an opinion on many subjects
and is ready to share those opinions -
labeling them as "truth."
Sometimes it is relatively easy
to filter out these opinions.
Upon hearing an ad for the latest
weight-loss powder on late-night TV,
our skepticism leaps to our defense.
However, if we have heard the same opinion for years
from our parents, friends,
government officials, or religious leaders,
we are more likely to believe without questioning
than to raise our filter of skepticism
and ask the hard questions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Truth is not defined by
how many people believe something.
Ask. Question. Think.
Decide - for yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:
"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"
But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:
"If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A good question is never answered.
It is not a bolt to be tightened into place
but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed
toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.
- John Ciardi

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants.
The question is: What are we busy about?
- Henry David Thoreau

"It's not that important,
don't worry about it" is the answer,
now what was the question?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Half of everything you were ever taught is wrong;
the question is which half.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It is not my place to doubt the sincere beliefs of others.
My job is to question my own beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes.
He who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.
- Chinese Proverb

If you ask a stupid question, you may feel stupid;
if you don't ask a stupid question, you remain stupid.
- Tony Rothman

We learn more by looking for the answer
to a question and not finding it
than we do from learning the answer itself.
- Lloyd Alexander

The big question is whether you are going to be able
to say a hearty yes to your adventure.
- Joseph Campbell

Our grandchildren's grandchildren will shake their heads in shame
at some of the beliefs that we hold most dear today -
the question is, which ones?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question
than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
- Bruce Lee

To be or not to be is not
a question of compromise.
Either you be or you don't be.
- Golda Meir

When we have arrived at the question,
the answer is already near.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life's most persistent and urgent question is,
'What are you doing for others?'
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

When you ask the wrong question,
you usually get a nonsense answer.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life's most urgent question is:
what are you doing for others?
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The most erroneous stories are those
we think we know best -
and therefore never scrutinize or question.
- Stephen Jay Gould

Often, we get stuck on a question
for which we can't find an acceptable answer.
That is a good time to consider asking a different question.
Every question is based on some assumptions -
usually invisible assumptions that we don't see, unless we go looking.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

One day Alice came to a fork in the road
and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.
"Which road do I take?" she asked.
His responses was a question: "Where do you want to go?"
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
- Lewis Carroll

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position
that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular;
but one must take it BECAUSE it is right.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The heart is always right -
if there's a question of choosing between the mind and the heart -
because mind is a creation of the society.
It has been educated.
You have been given it by the society, not by existence.
The heart is unpolluted.
- Osho

Do you ever question why our educational system
teaches competition rather than cooperation?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Always question WHY you are doing something.
Is it a free-will gift or an obligation?
That which is done out of a feeling of obligation
is unworkable as a substitute for a gift.
Obligation creates a feeling of resentment on your part,
and evokes resentment rather than gratitude
on the part of the recipient.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Identify your assumptions (what you believe).
Question how you feel when you hold those assumptions.
Visualize holding different assumptions.
Ask yourself how it feels to hold a different world-view.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I refuse to answer that question
on the grounds that I don't know the answer
- Douglas Adams

Each of us holds a different image of God.
There are as many perspectives on
the nature of God as there are people.
However much any of us may choose to argue,
or to fight and kill, for our point of view,
the nature of God is an unanswerable question.
Perhaps there is a specific answer,
that we will never learn - in this lifetime.
Perhaps the nature of God is so complex and multifaceted
that each view of God describes an aspect of the complex whole.
Or perhaps the nature of God is actually defined by our beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask.
She has long ago taken her resolution.
- Henry David Thoreau

A question that sometimes drives me hazy:
am I or are the others crazy?
- Albert Einstein

We are all "neighbors."
Our world has gotten too small for us to be anything else.
We can no longer have "us" and "them" - friends and enemies.
A person from Iraq, or Russia, or Columbia is
no more a stranger or enemy than a person from across town.
A few people everywhere are troublemakers.
Every religion provokes a few people to become extremists.
Do we need police around the globe? Unfortunately, we always will.
Do we need war? Does that question even deserve an answer?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It is an open question whether any behavior
based on fear of eternal punishment
can be regarded as ethical
or should be regarded as merely cowardly.
- Margaret Mead

Marriages don't last. When I meet a guy,
the first question I ask myself is:
is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?
- Rita Rudner

Education is not the answer to the question.
Education is the means to the answer to all questions.
- William Allin

If you have an emotional reaction in the presence of someone,
your heart is telling you that you have
not resolved your issues with them.
In other words, you have not truly forgiven that person.
All of this begs the question, how do we forgive?
First, cease lying to yourself and stop telling yourself stories
about why you behave the way you do.
Stop blaming your behavior on other people
and take responsibility for your emotional reactions.
If you could forgive all the people in your life
who have hurt or wounded you
it would be possible to be in control of your behavior
instead of being in reaction to other people all of the time.
Imagine living life without experiencing
a constant emotional roller-coaster of pain, anger, and jealousy!
That would be bliss!
- Sheri Rosenthal

Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being.
Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us.
- Carl Jung

Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason,
than that of blind-folded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson

It is an interesting question how far men
would retain their relative rank
if they were divested of their clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted
with the government of himself.
Can he, then be trusted with the government of others?
Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him?
Let history answer this question.
- Thomas Jefferson

Fix reason firmly in her seat,
and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion.
Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one,
he must more approve of the homage of reason,
than that of blindfolded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson

The question is not whether we will be extremists,
but what kind of extremists we will be...
The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A city is a place where there is no need to
wait for next week to get the answer to a question,
to taste the food of any country,
to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.
- Margaret Mead

If the present Congress errs in too much talking,
how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people
send one hundred and fifty lawyers,
whose trade it is to question everything,
yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
- Thomas Jefferson

I am trying to own my own opinions
and offer what I know as an option,
just as I would present a tray of appetizers for my guests.
Here are several choices that I have created -
if one looks good you are welcome to take it.
In other words, I am training myself to say,
"May I tell you how it is for me?"
When I ask the question, it means waiting
for the invitation to share.
It also means being prepared for my friend to say,
"No." They don't want to know.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

This [the Holocaust] must never happen again. ...
Be vigilant about your rights.
Care about the rights and human dignity of others.
When the rights of any group, no matter how small,
no matter how marginal, are violated,
your liberty, your freedom is put at risk.
Let there never be a day when we cast about in horror
and have to ask the question, "How did it ever come to this?"
- Thomas Childers, Ph.D., Professor of History,
University of Pennsylvania, in the closing remarks
of his six-hour Teaching Company audio lecture series

Find your balance and stand with it.
Find your song and sing it out.
Find your cadence and let it appear like a dance.
Find the questions that only you know how to ask and
The answers that you are content to not know.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born?
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Think about these once in a while
and watch your answers change.
- Richard Bach

We Gain All Genuine Insight From Questions and Experiments.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When you keep getting the wrong answers,
try asking better questions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.
- Susan Sontag

Successful people ask better questions,
and as a result, they get better answers.
- Tony Robbins

Decide questions without regard for tradition -
one way or the other.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Questions are a microscope peering into the depths of the soul.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Quotes and Sayings

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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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