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 playwright from the United States 1915 - 2005

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.

„The occupation made it very clear to me that there was something wrong, and I started to ask myself all kinds of questions and came to the conclusion that Zionism is negative and bad, and that we are oppressing the Palestinians.“

—  Leah Tsemel Israeli lawyer 1945

"The Israeli who defends suicide bombers," 2003

„Remember, every business firm, like even a mom and pop grocery store, is a market imperfection. A firm is defined in economic theory as a market imperfection introduced to deal with transaction costs. And the sort of theory is that the imperfections, the firms, are kinda like little islands in a free market sea. But the problem with that is that the sea doesn't remotely resemble a free market, and the islands are bigger than the sea; so that raises some questions about the picture. But these market imperfections, like a firm, or a transnational corporation, or a strategic alliance among them, this is a form of administering interchanges. And there's a real question about whether we want to accept that. Why, for example, should the international socioeconomic system, or for that matter our own society, be in the hands of unaccountable private tyrannies? That's a decision, it's not a law of nature.“

—  Noam Chomsky american linguist, philosopher and activist 1928

Talk titled "U.S. Foreign Policy in a Globalized World" at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, March 13, 2000 https://web.archive.org/web/20021220030406/http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/ed270/multimedia.html.
Quotes 2000s, 2000

„It's not only the question, but the way you try to solve it.“

—  Maryam Mirzakhani Iranian mathematician 1977 - 2017

Interview with Research Fellow Maryam Mirzakhani | january 2008

„In my opinion, it is the industry concerned which should have the chief say in the question of the amount of theoretical training required. It is the industry which uses the products of the schools, and, like every consumer, it has the right to make its wishes known.“

—  Henri Fayol Developer of Fayolism 1841 - 1925

Source: Henri Fayol addressed his colleagues in the mineral industry, 1900, p. 909

„Question is, are you bozos smart enough to feel stupid?“

—  Eminem American rapper and actor 1972

"Berzerk"
2010s, The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2013)

„When you love something, you'll always come back to it. You'll always keep asking questions, and finding answers.“

—  Kobe Bryant American basketball player 1978 - 2020

„I was obsessed with fairytales, and I was a very, very inquisitive kid, and I would ask my mom all kinds of questions. It all kind of formed a story in my head, and I really wanted to be a published author when I was 10, but I had a hard time writing a novel when I was 10, so I decided to wait until I was little bit older and then get it done.“

—  Chris Colfer actor, singer, book author 1990

-Chris Colfer on how he came up with the idea of TLOS
Interview Quotes, Random Quotes

„You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer 'yes' without having asked any clear question.“

—  Albert Camus, book The Fall

The Fall (1956)

„The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and makres real advances in science.“

—  Albert Einstein German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity 1879 - 1955

http://umich.edu/~scps/html/01chap/html/summary.htm
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)

„The question "What is Life?" is… a linguistic trap. To answer according to the rules of grammar, we must supply a noun, a thing. But life on Earth is more like a verb. It repairs, maintains, re-creates, and outdoes itself.“

—  Lynn Margulis American evolutionary biologist 1938 - 2011

What is Life? (1995)

„If you had to chose one half of your son, which one would it be?"
What kind of a question is that?!"
No need to snap. It was just a question.“

—  Johnny Depp American actor, film producer, and musician 1963

„I suppose nowadays it's all a question of surgery, isn't it? Of course the notion is beautiful, the idea of staying a boy and a child forever, and I think you can. I have known plenty of people who, in their later years, had the energy of children and the kind of curiosity and fascination with things like little children. I think we can keep that, and I think it's important to keep that part of staying young. But I also think it's great fun growing old.“

—  Johnny Depp American actor, film producer, and musician 1963

„If there's any message to my work, it is ultimately that it's OK to be different, that it's good to be different, that we should question ourselves before we pass judgment on someone who looks different, behaves different, talks different, is a different color.“

—  Johnny Depp American actor, film producer, and musician 1963

Variant: If there's any message, it is ultimately that it's okay to be different; that it's good to be different, that we should question ourselves before we pass judgment on someone who looks different, behaves different, talks different, is a different color.

„There are four questions of value in life… What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living "for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is same. Only love.“

—  Johnny Depp American actor, film producer, and musician 1963

„The question is—what is the question?“

—  John Archibald Wheeler American physicist 1911 - 2008

Leonard Susskind, The Black Hole War (2008), chapter 13

„At this point, an urgent question arises:… Is it our duty to seek to become a thorough and complete human being, one quite sufficient unto himself; or, on the contrary, to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an organism? Briefly, is the division of labor, at the same time that it is a law of nature, also a moral rule of human conduct; and, if it has this latter character, why and in what degree?“

—  Émile Durkheim French sociologist (1858-1917) 1858 - 1917

Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 41.

„Not by speeches and votes of the majority are the great questions of the time decided — that was the error of 1848 and 1849 — but by iron and blood.“

—  Otto von Bismarck German statesman, Chancellor of Germany 1815 - 1898

Nicht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschieden — daß ist der große Fehler von 1848 und 1849 gewesen — sondern durch Eisen und Blut.
Variant translations :
: It is not by speeches and majority vote that the great questions of our time will be decided — as that was error of 1848 and 1849 — but rather by iron and blood.
The great questions of the time are not decided by speeches and majority decisions — that was the error of 1848 and 1849 — but by iron and blood.
The great issues of the day are not decided through speeches and majority resolutions — that was the great error of 1848 and 1849 — but through blood and iron.
The great questions of the day will not be decided by speeches and the resolutions of majorities — that was the great mistake from 1848 to 1849 — but by blood and iron.
The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions … but by iron and blood.
Speech to the Budget Commission of the Prussian Diet (30 September 1862), published in Fürst Bismarck als Redner, Vol. 2 (after 1881), edited by Wilhelm Böhm, p. 12 http://books.google.de/books?id=3WsIAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA12); after some objections to his initial speech Bismarck returned to the podium and declared:
::Auswärtige Conflicte zu suchen, um über innere Schwierigkeiten hinwegzukommen, dagegen müsse er sich verwahren; das würde frivol sein; er wolle nicht Händel suchen ; er spreche von Conflicten, denen wir nicht entgehen würden, ohne daß wir sie suchten.
:: I must protest that I would never seek foreign conflicts just to go over domestic difficulties; that would be frivolous. I was speaking of conflicts that we could not avoid, even though we do not seek them.
::* Die Reden des Ministerpräsidenten von Bismarck-Schönhausen im Preußischen Landtage 1862-1865 (1903) edited by Horst Kohl, p. 31
1860s

„The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.“

—  John Cage American avant-garde composer 1912 - 1992