Quotes about doubt
page 11

“Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Literature

“We live in a time of fear," Skulduggery said, "where we're too scared of upsetting the status quo to ask the questions we need to be asking.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

Fear, Time

“So he's worth a second shot?

The more apt question, my dear, is: are you?”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“I am proud that I defy your categories. I am proud that I don't fit easily into any box. I am proud of all the things I am and all the things i can be. Question yourself every time you think you only see one thing in me.”

David Levithan book Wide Awake

Source: Wide Awake

Thinking, Time, Box

“We wander, question. But the answer waits in each separate heart - the answer of our own identity and the way by which we can master loneliness and feel that at last we belong.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Source: The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings

Way, Feeling, Waiting, Heart

“When I got the chance
I asked them a slew of questions.
They offered to burn me;
it was the only thing they knew.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Chance

“When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?" You don't get ideas. Ideas get you.”

Connie Willis (1945) American science fiction writer

Hate, People, Idea

“He looked at me intently, from what seemed behind the veil of a grave experience. Then slowly and prophetically, he said the scariest thing I'd ever heard: "Because the answer to a heartfelt question, Jack, will always break your heart.”

Thomas H. Cook (1947) American writer

Source: Master of the Delta

Heart

“The one who comes to question himself cares for mankind.”

Kenneth Patchen (1911–1972) American writer and poet

“for some reason, dying men always ask the question they know the answer to. perhaps it's so they can die being right.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Men

“That's my answer to the question what is your strongest emotion, if you ever want to ask me: Curiosity, old bean. Curiosity every time.”

Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress

Source: The Dud Avocado

Time

“Magnus placed an order with the room service, who had by now stopped questioning Mr. Bane's unusual needs for things like twenty-four plates of scrambled eggs and “”.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Rise of the Hotel Dumort

“What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.”

Nina Simone (1933–2003) American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist

Source: I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone

Change

“So I want to ask you a hypothetical question.

My favorite kind. Next to rhetorical ones. I can nap equally well through either kind.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Shadow

Source: Ender's Shadow

“some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Annihilation

Source: Annihilation

“Men are like that sometimes - if they meet someone and fall in love, it's real, no matter how fast it happened. But if someone falls for a woman they happen to care about, all they do is question the man's intentions.”

Nicholas Sparks book Nights in Rodanthe

Source: Nights in Rodanthe

Love, Men

“What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.”

Bernhard Schlink book The Reader

Source: The Reader

Sadness, Thinking, Happiness

“Well then," Faye said. "Now that you've heard our story, we have just one question to ask you." She fixed Cassie with an odd half smile and said in a sweet, false voice, "Are you planning to be a good witch or a bad witch?”

L.J. Smith book The Initiation

Source: The Initiation

Smile, Falseness

“A question is a trap, and an answer your foot in it.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Pt. 4
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)
Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“I always love seeing what worries you. Strigoi? No. Questionable food? Yes.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Love, Food

“People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

People

“If I play a stupid girl and ask a stupid question, I've got to follow it through, what am I supposed to do, look intelligent?”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Stupidity, Girl, Intelligence

“His invitation lingers. So does my question. Why me? I don't know the answer. When I look at myself in the mirror, all I see is a starving, stunted bird who never grew wings and lost all reason to sing.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Bird, Singing

“The only question that nobody ever asks is: What breaks your heart? I think that should be asked of all "artists."… So, what breaks your heart?”

Jonathan Carroll (1949) novelist, short story writer

Thinking, Heart

“Life would be unbearably dull if we had answers to all our questions.”

Jim Butcher book Death Masks

Source: Death Masks

Life

“Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to
ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.”

Og Mandino (1923–1996) American author

Motivational, Attitude, Success, Inspirational

“There are questions I'm still not wise enough to answer, just wise enough to no longer ask.”

George Jones (1931–2013) American musician, singer and songwriter

Source: I Lived to Tell It All (1996, ebook 2014), Page 148.

“The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.”

Brian Greene (1963) American physicist

Source: The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

“We must ask ourselves these questions as often as we dare. How will the world change if we do not question it?”

Kate DiCamillo The Magician's Elephant

Source: The Magician's Elephant

World, Change

“You are not trying to find the answer to a question, you are simply trying to confirm something you desperately want to believe; That everyone is evil. ” Chantal”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Evil

“The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Life, Art, Spring

“It's hard to answer a question you haven't been asked. It's hard to show you tried unless you end up succeeding.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Questions are great, but only if you know the answers. If you ask questions and the answers surprise you, you look silly.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Burnt Offerings

Source: Burnt Offerings

“Evelyn was an insomniac so when they say she died in her sleep, you have to question that.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Source: Pontoon

Sleep

“I picture heaven as a vast library, with unlimited volumes to read. And paintings and statues to examine galore. I picture it as a great doorway to learning… rather than one great dull answer to all our questions”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Source: The Mummy

Learning, Reading, Painting

“And now, Anubis, I find you in this den of iniquity, this morass of questionable behavior, this… this--'

'School?”

Rick Riordan book The Serpent's Shadow

Source: The Serpent's Shadow

School, Behavior

“If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 193

World, Courage

“Again, I repeat, don’t ask questions you don’t want answered. Just accept the fact that Acheron is a freak of nature and let it go. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

Nature

“It's possible this whole "Why do Latinos love Morrisey?" question will haunt us forever. Fortunately, Canadian academics are on the case.”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

Love

“The only question now is: How much can I hang on to?”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

“And that is just the point… how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. "Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

World, Beauty

“That sounds almost practiced, James Carstairs. How many girls have you made swoon with that observation?"
"There is only one girl I care to make swoon," he said. "The question is, does she?"
She smiled at him. "She does.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Smile, Girl

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Wise, Life, Fools

“Ask dumb questions.”

Patrick Lencioni (1965) American writer

Getting Naked: A Business Fable about Shedding the Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty

“Whenever you write on a subject that questions the status quo, there are bound to be many who wrestle with the issues”

Ted Dekker (1962) American writer

Source: The Slumber of Christianity: Awakening a Passion for Heaven on Earth

“being sixteen in the pants I died full of questions”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

“I have been a friend to Shadowhunters. I know many of your families, going back for hundreds of years."
"There is nothing we can do to correct the questionable judgments of our ancestors," Lucian said.
Magnus hated this guy.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Last Stand of the New York Institute

Hate, Family, Guy

“For there is nothing quite so terror-inducing as the loss of sleep. It creates phantoms and doubts, causes one to questions one's own abilities and judgement, and, over time, dismantles, from within, the body.”

Charlie Huston Sleepless

Source: Sleepless

Sleep, Loss, Time

“Were you playing with Stuart?" she asked.
The question was loaded. I was a filthy, filthy woman, and even the five-year-old knew it.”

Maureen Johnson book Let It Snow

Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

“What is the answer?" [ I was silent ] "In that case, what is the question?”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Last words (27 July 1946) as told by Alice B. Toklas in What Is Remembered (1963)

“Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage - at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Wisdom, Courage, Universe, Science

“Quit asking questions.”

Jaci Burton

Changing the Game

“This question is posed to mayself, am I a man who thinks he's an angel? Or an angel who thinks he's a man?”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Angels, Thinking

“I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Angels

“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

People

“The question then is, how much are you willing to give?"
And I answered, "Anything."
A breath later, Zane echoed my response with, "Everything.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Hawksong

Source: Hawksong

“Question: What is the opposite of faith?

Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief.

Doubt.”

Salman Rushdie book The Satanic Verses

Source: The Satanic Verses

Faith

“Many of us have made our world so familiar that we do not see it anymore. An interesting question to ask yourself at night is, What did I really see this day?”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

World, Night

“To fly or not to fly, that's the question.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

Flying

“Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

Boy, Business

“They say drugs are not the answer, but really, what is the question?”

Janet Fitch (1955) American writer

Source: Paint it Black

“The size of your body is just right. The only question is whether you're big enough inside.”

Patrick Carman book The Dark Hills Divide

Source: The Dark Hills Divide

“Why can’t you ever answer a simple question? (Wulf)
Ask me a simple question and you will get a simple answer. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

“If we would give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks’ vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.”

Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879–1958) American author and social activist

Life, Business, Falseness

“I don't know. I imagine good teaching as a circle of earnest people sitting down to ask each other meaningful questions. I don't see it as a handing down of answers…”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

People, Imagination

“I wish I had an answer to that because I'm tired of answering that question.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

“Honest, open questions are countercultural”

Parker J. Palmer

A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

“The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Believe or die! Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Rant in E-Minor (1997)
Variant: The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Beleive or die! Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options.

Love, God, Forgiveness, Suffering

“The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Color

“Think! There's nothing certain in our future! All we can hope for is a vague continuation. But in spite of that, you're going to keep on living. You can't give up on life just because it's vague. It's a question of possibilities…”

Kōji Suzuki book Ring

Source: Ring

Life, Hope, Thinking, Future

“It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But anything more than that you can't. Anything more than that is luck.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

Happiness

“It's not enough to believe! Don't you see that, you stupid girl? You could spend your whole life hoping and believing! If a love affair is one-sided, then it's only ever a question, never an answer. You can't live your life waiting for an answer.”

Sophie Kinsella book Twenties Girl

Source: Twenties Girl

Love, Life, Stupidity, Hope

“This wasn’t the first time I’d been pulled out of bed for a crucial mission. It was, however, the first time I’d been subjected to such a personal line of questioning.

“Are you a virgin?”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Time, Personality

“The greatest gift is not being afraid to question.”

Ruby Dee (1922–2014) American actress

“I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored. But then it occurred to me that musing is a pointless waste of anyone's time, and instead I went off to see if I could find a Baby Ruth candy bar, a far more profitable exercise.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

Life, Exercises, Time, Baby

“There was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

People

“The trick to surviving an interrogation is patience. Don’t offer up anything. Don’t explain. Answer the question and only the question that is asked so you don’t accidentally put your head in a noose.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: The Impossible Knife of Memory

Patience

“People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can't answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It's easy. Most people pass over incrementally, making a series of perforations in the membrane between here and there until an opening exists. And who can resist an opening?”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)

People

“Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

God, Waiting, Heart

“I don't ask myself what did I live for, said Carlene strongly. That is a man's question. I ask whom did I live for.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Source: On Beauty

“Maya Angelou observed you cant use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. Sadly, too often creativity is smothered rather than nurtured. There has to be climate in which new ways of thinking, perceiving, questioning are encouraged.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Source: How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

Angels, Way, Thinking

“If what you're asking is how I debated whether or not to love her the answer is I didn't. Not at all. It just happened. I didn't ever question it; by the time I realized what was happening, it was already done.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Love, Time

“The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Complete Essays

World, Parting

“There are two questions that we have to ask ourselves. The 1st is " Where am I going?" and the 2nd is "Who will go with me?"
If you ever get these questions in the wrong order, you are in trouble.”

Howard Thurman (1899–1981) American writer

“If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.”

Quentin Tarantino (1963) American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor

Source: Pulp Fiction: A Quentin Tarantino Screenplay

“The second you stop questioning yourself is the second that you become the monster.
-Merry”

Laurell K. Hamilton A Kiss of Shadows

Source: A Kiss of Shadows

“To whom could I put this question (with any hope of an answer)? Does being able to live without someone you loved mean you loved her less than you thought…?”

Roland Barthes (1915–1980) French philosopher, critic and literary theorist

Love, Hope

“Well, let me leave it at this: if God does exist, He would have a great deal be sad about. And if He doesn’t exist, then that too would make Him quite sad, I imagine. So to answer your question, God must be sad.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

God, Sadness, Imagination

“The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Thinking

“I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth, then I ask myself the same question.”

Harun Yahya (1956) Turkish author

Bird, Flying

“If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you don't already possess”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Books

“If he still isn’t giving you what you want, the question to ask yourself is whether you really want him.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl-A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

“Librarians, Dusty, possess a vast store of politeness. These are people who get asked regularly the dumbest questions on God's green earth. These people tolerate every kind of crank and eccentric and mouth-breather there is.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

"Cowboy Librarians" (13 December 1997)
A Prairie Home Companion
Source: Dusty and Lefty: The Lives of the Cowboys

God, People

“Jesus was victorious not because he never flinched, talked back, or questioned, but having flinched, talked back, and questioned, he remained faithful.”

Brennan Manning book The Ragamuffin Gospel

p. 168 https://books.google.com/books?id=sUTZCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA11&dq=%22My+deepest+awareness+of+myself+is+that+I+am+deeply+loved+by+Jesus+Christ+and+I+have+done+nothing+to+earn+it+or+deserve+it.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi7yeaQ9ZTkAhUOnFkKHUBmB1sQ6AEwAHoECAAQAg#v=onepage&q=%22My%20deepest%20awareness%20of%20myself%20is%20that%20I%20am%20deeply%20loved%20by%20Jesus%20Christ%20and%20I%20have%20done%20nothing%20to%20earn%20it%20or%20deserve%20it.%22&f=false <br class="br">1990s, The Ragamuffin Gospel (1990) <br class="br">Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

Faith, Victory

“we make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

World, Courage

“One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Shadow

Source: Ender's Shadow

Thinking