„The question of consciousness has always intrigued me. It starts with the question, 'Are we our bodies or are we our consciousness? What are we made up of?“
— Gene Roddenberry American television screenwriter and producer 1921 - 1991
Quotes about doubt
A collection of quotes on the topic of question.
Related topicsTotal 5136 quotes question, filter:
„Most people would define treason as a betrayal of one's country or sovereign. In my book, the book of natural law, treason is properly defined as a betrayal of one's countrymen—and, in particular, the betrayal of the individual's right to life, liberty and property. (To your question, yes, this renders almost all politicians traitors by definition.)“
— Ilana Mercer South African writer
“The Peerless Malevolence of Redcoat Piers Morgan,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=692 WorldNetDaily.com, January 18, 2013.
2010s, 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
„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 American anthropologist 1901 - 1978
Attributed in American Quotations (1992) by Gorton Carruth and Eugene H. Ehrlich, p. 149
1990s
„On the surface it may seem that wars are caused by economic and political questions, but in fact they are caused by our wholesale slaughter of animals. The laws of justice are inexorable, and human beings are going to have to pay with their own blood … We kill animals, but nature is an organic whole, and by killing animals we are, as it were, affecting certain glands in that organism. When this happens, the balance of the organism is disrupted, and it is not surprising that before long war breaks out among men. Yes, human beings have slaughtered millions of animals for their meat, without realizing that on the invisible plane those animals are linked to other human beings, and it is they who will now have to share the fate of the animals. When we slaughter animals we are slaughtering human beings. Everybody agrees that it is time to establish the reign of peace in the world, that there must be no more wars. Yes, but war will go on just as long as we continue to slaughter animals, because by destroying them we are destroying ourselves.“
— Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov Bulgarian philosopher 1900 - 1986
The Yoga of Nutrition, Editions Prosveta, 2012 ebook edition, pp. 24 https://books.google.it/books?id=jnoVCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT24-25.
„The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions.“
— Claude Lévi-Strauss French anthropologist and ethnologist 1908 - 2009
„I guess I've had only one question all my life. Why do emergent selves, virtual identities, pop up all over the place creating worlds, whether at the mind/body level, the cellular level, or the transorganism level? This phenomenon is something so productive that it doesn't cease creating entirely new realms: life, mind, and societies. Yet these emergent selves are based on processes so shifty, so ungrounded, that we have an apparent paradox between the solidity of what appears to show up and its groundlessness. That, to me, is a key and eternal question.“
— Francisco Varela Chilean biologist 1946 - 2001
The Emergent Self (1995)
„Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing? That is the question.“
— Martin Heidegger, book Introduction to Metaphysics
Warum ist überhaupt Seiendes und nicht vielmehr Nichts? Das ist die Frage.
What is Metaphysics? (1929), p. 110
Cf. Gottfried Leibniz, De rerum originatione radicali (1697)ː "cur aliquid potius extiterit quam nihil."
Source: Introduction to Metaphysics
„Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.“
— Voltaire French writer, historian, and philosopher 1694 - 1778
Il est encore plus facile de juger de l'esprit d'un homme par ses questions que par ses réponses. (It is easier to judge the mind of a man by his questions rather than his answers) — Pierre-Marc-Gaston, duc de Lévis (1764-1830), Maximes et réflexions sur différents sujets de morale et de politique (Paris, 1808): Maxim xviii
Misattributed
„I know you want to study me psychologically. That's reasonable and I appreciate it. At least you don't lecture to me and pry into my affairs. You have a good technique as a psychiatrist. Let the other fellow talk and stick his neck into the noose. I don't mean that the way it sounds. But you hardly say anything. Someday I'm going to ask you questions.“
— Hermann Göring German politician and military leader 1893 - 1946
To Leon Goldensohn (21 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)
„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
„The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.“
— Thomas Sowell American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author 1930
„And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity.“
Source: Pet Sematary (1983)
Context: It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls - as little as one may like to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one's sense of humor begins to reassert itself.
„But my favorite of Einstein's words on religion is "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind." I like this because both science and religion are needed to answer life's great questions.“
— Temple Grandin USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist 1947
Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
„I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.“
— Mikhail Bakunin, book God and the State
God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)
Context: Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.
„"How to test?" is a question that cannot be answered in general. "When to test?" however, does have a general answer: as early and as often as possible.“
— Bjarne Stroustrup Danish computer scientist, creator of C++ 1950