Arthur Miller: Quotes about doubt

“I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day.”

Arthur Miller

Paris Review (Summer 1966)
Context: Success, instead of giving freedom of choice, becomes a way of life. There's no country I've been to where people, when you come into a room and sit down with them, so often ask you, "What do you do?" And, being American, many's the time I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day.

Soul , Failure , Question , Thinking

“More important, from this total questioning of what has previously been unquestioned, we learn.”

Arthur Miller

Tragedy and the Common Man (1949)
Context: Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are "flawless." Most of us are in that category.
But there are among us today, as there always have been, those who act against the scheme of things that degrades them, and in the process of action everything we have accepted out of fear of insensitivity or ignorance is shaken before us and examined, and from this total onslaught by an individual against the seemingly stable cosmos surrounding us — from this total examination of the "unchangeable" environment — comes the terror and the fear that is classically associated with tragedy. More important, from this total questioning of what has previously been unquestioned, we learn.

Question , Learning

“Tragedy enlightens — and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies.”

Arthur Miller

Tragedy and the Common Man (1949)
Context: The tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of his love and creative instinct. Tragedy enlightens — and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies.

Question , Freedom

“It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

Source: The Crucible

People , Question

“That is a very good question. I don't know the answer. But can you tell me the name of a classical Greek shoemaker?”

Arthur Miller

His reply to a shoe manufacturer who had asked why Miller's job should be subsidized when his was not, as recounted at a London press conference. The Guardian (25 January 1990)

Question

“Hale: There is a prodigious fear of this court in the country —
Danforth: Then there is a prodigious guilt in the country. Are you afraid to be questioned here?
Hale: I may only fear the Lord, sir, but there is fear in the country nevertheless.
Danforth: Reproach me not with the fear in the country; there is fear in the country because there is a moving plot to topple Christ in the country!
Hale: But it does not follow that everyone accused is part of it.
Danforth: No uncorrupted man may fear this court, Mr. Hale!”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

The Crucible (1953)

Fear , Question , Christ , Parting

“Above all else, tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect.
No tragedy can therefore come about when its author fears to question absolutely everything, when he regards any institution, habit or custom as being either everlasting, immutable or inevitable. In the tragic view the need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star, and whatever it is that hedges his nature and lowers it is ripe for attack and examination.”

Arthur Miller

Tragedy and the Common Man (1949)

Fear , Star , Question , Nature

“The job is to ask questions — it always was — and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.”

Arthur Miller

National Observer (20 January 1964)

Question