Quotes about doubt (5301 quotes, page 2)

“The seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency.”

Alhazen (965–1038) Arab physicist, mathematician and astronomer

Alhazen, quoted in “Muslim Journeys.” Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013. Also in Ibn al-Haytham Brief life of an Arab mathematician: died circa 1040 (September-October 2003) http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/09/ibn-al-haytham-html

Truth , Faith , Nature , Study

“So, in the end, have we learned anything from this look at why the world turned out the way it is, that's of any use to us in our future? Something, I think. That the key to why things change is the key to everything. How easy is it for knowledge to spread? And that, in the past, the people who made change happen, were the people who had that knowledge, whether they were craftsmen, or kings. Today, the people who make things change, the people who have that knowledge, are the scientists and the technologists, who are the true driving force of humanity. And before you say what about the Beethovens and the Michelangelos? Let me suggest something with which you may disagree violently: that at best, the products of human emotion, art, philosophy, politics, music, literature, are interpretations of the world, that tell you more about the guy who's talking, than about the world he's talking about. Second hand views of the world, made third hand by your interpretation of them. Things like that [art book] as opposed to this [transparency of some filaments]. Know what it is? It's a bunch of amino acids, the stuff that goes to build up a worm, or a geranium, or you. This stuff [art book] is easier to take, isn't it? Understandable. Got people in it. This, [transparency] scientific knowledge is hard to take, because it removes the reassuring crutches of opinion, ideology, and leaves only what is demonstrably true about the world. And the reason why so many people may be thinking about throwing away those crutches is because thanks to science and technology they have begun to know that they don't know so much. And that, if they are to have more say in what happens to their lives, more freedom to develop their abilities to the full, they have to be helped towards that knowledge, that they know exists, and that they don't possess. And by helped towards that knowledge I don't mean give everybody a computer and say: help yourself. Where would you even start? No, I mean trying to find ways to translate the knowledge. To teach us to ask the right questions. See, we're on the edge of a revolution in communications technology that is going to make that more possible than ever before. Or, if that’s not done, to cause an explosion of knowledge that will leave those of us who don't have access to it, as powerless as if we were deaf, dumb and blind. And I don't think most people want that. So, what do we do about it? I don't know. But maybe a good start would be to recognize within yourself the ability to understand anything. Because that ability is there, as long as it is explained clearly enough. And then go and ask for explanations. And if you're thinking, right now, what do I ask for? Ask yourself, if there is anything in your life that you want changed. That's where to start.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 10 - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You

Life , People , Books , World

“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 (1990) actor, singer, book author

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

Moms , Idea , Fairytale , Time

“The whole question of evolution seems less momentous than it did, because, unlike the Victorians, we do not feel that to be descended from animals is degrading to human dignity.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," Tribune (21 July 1944)<sup> http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/</sup>
As I Please (1943–1947)

Feeling , Animals

“Understanding human history in the millennia following the Agricultural Revolution boils down to a single question: how did humans organise themselves in mass-cooperation networks, when they lacked the biological instincts necessary to sustain such networks? The short answer is that humans created imagined orders and devised scripts. These two inventions filled the gaps left by our biological inheritance.”

Yuval Noah Harari book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Imagination , History , Understanding

“Anybody who's ever been broken up with, or had their heart stepped on or ripped out of them; you question everything you've based your whole life on. It's like, is anything real? Cause nothing 's more real than that, and now it's gone.”

Kristen Stewart (1990) American actress

YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VIPZ3dHD4Y&feature=player_embedded

Life , Heart

“What a man sacrifices in struggling for his Volk, a woman sacrifices in struggling to preserve this Volk in individual cases. What a man gives in heroic courage on the battlefield, woman gives in eternally patient devotion, in eternally patient suffering and endurance. Every child to which she gives birth is a battle which she wages in her Volk’s fateful question of to be or not to be.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech from the Sixth Nazi Party Congress, Nuremberg (September 8th, 1934), quoted in Hitler: speeches and proclamations, 1932-1945 - Volume 2 - Page 533 https://books.google.com/books?id=a9dVAAAAYAAJ&q=What+a+man+sacrifices+in+struggling+for+his+Volk,+a+woman+sacrifices+in+struggling+to+preserve+this+Volk+in+individual+cases&dq=What+a+man+sacrifices+in+struggling+for+his+Volk,+a+woman+sacrifices+in+struggling+to+preserve+this+Volk+in+individual+cases&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj8id_w8-TWAhXIRSYKHSn5CV0Q6AEILDAB
1930s

Fate , Birth , Courage , Suffering

“We shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and a migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the site of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now, if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O friends and judges, can be greater than this? …Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. …What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they would not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

40c–41c
Plato, Apology

Life , Death , Men , World

“If the development by the enemy as well as by us of thermonuclear weapons could have been averted, I think we would be in a somewhat safer world today than we are…I do not think we want to argue technical questions here, and I do not think it is very meaningful for me to speculate as to how we would have responded had the technical picture at that time been more as it was later.
However, it is my judgment in these things that when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb. I do not think anybody opposed making it; there were some debates about what to do with it after it was made. I cannot very well imagine if we had known in late 1949 what we got to know by early 1951 that the tone of our report would have been the same.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

Oppenheimer testifying in his defense in his 1954 security hearings, discussing the American reaction to the first successful Russian test of an atomic bomb and the debate whether to develop the "super" hydrogen bombs with vastly higher explosive power; from volume II of the Oppenheimer hearing transcripts http://www.osti.gov/includes/opennet/includes/Oppenheimer%20hearings/Vol%20II%20Oppenheimer.pdf, pg 95/266 (emphasis added)

World , Way , Imagination , Thinking

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)

Life

“The question is—what is the question?”

John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) American physicist

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

Funny , Heartbreaking , Family , Graduation

“Long and tedious reflection cannot enable us to shape our decisions and attitudes properly; only that definite and clear instruction which we gain can form a direct inner link to God. This instruction alone is able to give us the inner firmness and lasting peace of mind which must be regarded as the highest boon in life. And if we ascribe to God, in addition to His omnipotence and omniscience, also the attributes of goodness and love, recourse to Him produces an increased feeling of safety and happiness in the human being thirsting for solace. Against this conception not even the slightest objection can be raised from the point of natural science, for as we pointed it out before, questions of ethics are entirely outside of its realm.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Religion and Natural Science (1937)

Love , Life , God , Peace

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

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

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

Stupidity , Feeling

“The thing that I think very striking is that no one, or no one I can remember, ever writes of an execution with approval. The dominant note is always horror. Society, apparently, cannot get along without capital punishment—for there are some people whom it is simply not safe to leave alive—and yet there is no one, when the pinch comes, who feels it right to kill another human being in cold blood. I watched a man hanged once. There was no question that everybody concerned knew this to be a dreadful, unnatural action. I believe it is always the same—the whole jail, warders and prisoners alike, is upset when there is an execution. It is probably the fact that capital punishment is accepted as necessary, and yet instinctively felt to be wrong, that gives so many descriptions of executions their tragic atmosphere. They are mostly written by people who have actually watched an execution and feel it to be a terrible and only partly comprehensible experience which they want to record; whereas battle literature is largely written by people who have never heard a gun go off and think of a battle as a sort of football match in which nobody gets hurt.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please" column in The Tribune (3 November 1944)<sup> http://alexpeak.com/twr/oocp/</sup>
"As I Please" (1943–1947)

People , Feeling , Literature , Thinking

“There is a season for everything, patience will reward you and reveal all answers to your questions.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Patience , Season

“"What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?"
This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table.
Richard continued, "What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself."”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

Stupidity , Way , Idea , Understanding

“I am the same old actor. When people question me I really look back and think but I feel people love characters like Rahul or Raj because they are different. Every role is different and I am not reinventing myself as an actor.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Amrita Mulchandani

Love , People , Feeling , Thinking

“Part of how we come to take command of our world, to take command of our environment, to make these tools by which we're able to do this, is we ask ourselves questions about it the whole time. So this man starts to ask himself questions. "This world," he says, "so who made it?" Now, of course he thinks that, because he makes things himself. So he's looking for someone who would have made this world. He says, "Well, so who would have made this world? Well, it must be something a little like me. Obviously much much bigger. And necessarily invisible. But he would have made it. Now why did he make it?" Now we always ask ourselves "why?" because we look for intention around us; because we always intend– we do something with intention. We boil an egg in order to eat it. So we look at the rocks, and we look at the trees, and we wonder what intention is here even though it doesn't have intention.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Parrots, the Universe and Everything (2001)

World , Thinking , Tree , Time

“And now once again I asked myself the question: do I love her? And once more I could not answer, that is to say, again, for the hundreth time, I answered that I hated her.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Gambler

The Gambler (1866)

Love , Hate , Time

“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.

Stupidity , Faith , Intelligence , Knowledge

“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 (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

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 , Thinking , Success

“The master key of knowledge is, indeed, a persistent and frequent questioning.”

Peter Abelard Sic et Non

Introduction as translated in Readings in European History, Vol. I (1904) edited by James Harvey Robinson, p. 451
Variant translation:
Constant and frequent questioning is the first key to wisdom … For through doubting we are led to inquire, and by inquiry we perceive the truth.
Prologue as translated in A History of Education During the Middle Ages and the Transition to Modern Times (1918) by Frank Pierrepont Graves; 2005 edition, p. 53
Sic et Non (1120)
Context: I have ventured to bring together various dicta of the holy fathers, as they came to mind, and to formulate certain questions which were suggested by the seeming contradictions in the statements. These questions ought to serve to excite tender readers to a zealous inquiry into truth and so sharpen their wits. The master key of knowledge is, indeed, a persistent and frequent questioning. Aristotle, the most clear-sighted of all the philosophers, was desirous above all things else to arouse this questioning spirit, for in his Categories he exhorts a student as follows: "It may well be difficult to reach a positive conclusion in these matters unless they be frequently discussed. It is by no means fruitless to be doubtful on particular points." By doubting we come to examine, and by examining we reach the truth.

Knowledge

“Questions about arts, traits, and styles of life are actually quite technical. They ask us to explain what happens among the agents of our minds.”

Marvin Minsky book Society of Mind

Source: The Society of Mind (1987), Ch.2
Context: Questions about arts, traits, and styles of life are actually quite technical. They ask us to explain what happens among the agents of our minds. But this is a subject about which we have never learned very much... Such questions will be answered in time. But it will just prolong the wait if we keep using pseudo-explanation words like "holistic" and "gestalt." …It's harmful, when naming leads the mind to think that names alone bring meaning close.

Life , Art

“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"The Freedom of the Press", unused preface to Animal Farm (1945), published in Times Literary Supplement (15 September 1972)
Context: At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

People , Idea , Thinking

“Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our nature of questioning.”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

Physics and Philosophy (1958)
Context: [I]n the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory we can indeed proceed without mentioning ourselves as individuals, but we cannot disregard the fact that natural science is formed by men. Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our nature of questioning. This was a possibility of which Descartes could not have thought, but it makes a sharp separation between the world and the I impossible.
If one follows the great difficulty which even eminent scientists like Einstein had in understanding and accepting the Copenhagen interpretation... one can trace the roots... to the Cartesian partition.... it will take a long time for it [this partition] to be replaced by a really different attitude toward the problem of reality. <!--p. 81

Nature , Science , Parting

“Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

The Value of Science (1955)
Context: The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.

Thinking , Freedom , Strong , Science

“Hold all and wait.
The questions that are in one’s mind will be worked out eventually without a word from the Master.
The light becomes stronger and the darkness vanishes in the reorganization of the inner man and his thinking processes and habits.
Do not make the mistake of trying to fit the teachings of ECK into the old ways of thinking.
Drop all and start over again.”

Paul Twitchell (1909–1971) American writer

Way , Thinking , Light , Waiting

“Three things give the student the possibility of surpassing his teacher: ask a lot of questions, remember the answers, teach.”

John Amos Comenius (1592–1670) Czech teacher, educator, philosopher and writer

Teachers

“God does not answer our desperate questionings; he simply gives us himself.”

Francois Mauriac (1885–1970) French author

God

“Man is not, as the croaking philosophers say, merely a rational animal, capable of understanding and knowledge; for, according to them, even irrational creatures appear possessed of understanding and knowledge. But man alone is the image and likeness of God ; and I mean by man, not one who performs actions similar to those of animals, but one who has advanced far beyond mere humanity — to God Himself. This question we have discussed more minutely in the treatise concerning animals. But the principal point to be spoken of now is, what is intended by the image and likeness of God.”

Tatian (120–180) Syrian writer

Ante-Nicene Christian library: v. 3 p. 20
Address to the Greeks

God , Understanding , Knowledge , Animals

“I think success is when you are confronted with utter defeat of your world, your intimacy, your ideas, your public picture, your heritage, your previous achievements. When in one moment it looks like there is one, and nothing that helps you. When almost every look is also a look of doubt, when you yourself put everything under the question mark. When all the illusions about yourself fall, illusions about your surroundings, about people, about faith and religion, about flags, about objects of love and how much are you in love…and then, in that moment of personal and private holocaust, of that ocean of pain looking like all inner strength faded away, and there is no right for excuses about your existence. When at that moment you rise and keep moving forward, you start and you lead a creative and productive life. Yes, I think that is objective strength and power.”

Alfred Freddy Krupa (1971) Croatian contemporary painter, master draughtsman, book artist and art teacher, the pioneer of the New Ink Art m…

Overcoming a Personal Holocaust, Alfred Freddy Krupa (in the article by Ante Vranković), Life As A Human (Canada), 2019
2010s

Faith , Religion , Pain , Success

“You can play a role in the shaping of tomorrow’s world by asking yourself questions like, “What kind of world do I want to live in?” and “What does democracy mean to me?””

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

There are many other options of organization for the future than those typically discussed today... In order to accomplish this task one must be free of bias and nationalism, and reflect those qualities in the design of policies. How would you approach that? This is a difficult project requiring input from many disciplines.
Source: Designing the Future (2007), p. 6-7

World , Democracy

“When it is a question of fighting against imperialism we can state with conviction that we are all Stalinists. We can take pride that we have taken part in the fight for the advance of our great cause against our enemies. From that point of view I am proud that we are Stalinists.”

Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Remark made at Kremlin New Year's Eve reception, December 31, 1956. Quoted in Khrushchev by Edward Crankshaw. ISBN 9781448205059

Fight , Parting

“Governments exist on confidence. Not on liberty. Not on righteousness. Not on force. They exist because people believe that they do. Because they don’t ask questions.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: The Expanse, Tiamat's Wrath (2019), Chapter 34 (p. 357)

Self-confidence , Confidence , People

“The church is unlike school. Simply, because you can't ask questions while the service is being delivered.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

School

“Maths seem to be based on predestination. You have the question, but the answer is already there. Your task is to get it correct, no matter how many times you have failed.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Time

“Maybe we've always asked the wrong question. We should ask ourselves about the meaning of death, rather than life. Are we not alive now?”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life , Death

“Don't ask the question, unless you are truly prepared for every possible anwser for it.”

Jim Russell

To many people tend to ask questions that the possible answers to that question might cause anger, hurt, disappointment or displays a weakness that they never were aware of until they got the one answer they weren't prepared for. If you haven't considered that then you might want to refrain from asking it.

“Quize is a luck game.
If you are lucky enough, you will win.
It would be fair if they would let everyone answer to the same question.”

Md Mim Akhtar

Game

““People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.””

John Irving book The Cider House Rules

Variant: People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
Source: The Cider House Rules

People

“So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.”

Clarice Lispector book The Hour of the Star

Variant: I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort. So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.
Source: The Hour of the Star (1977), p. 11

“Dreams are today's answers to tomorrow's questions.”

Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) Purported clairvoyant healer and psychic

Dreams

“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Third letter on sunspots (December 1612) to Mark Wesler (1558 - 1614), as quoted in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957) by Stillman Drake, p. 134 - 135; Italian text online at Liber Liber http://www.liberliber.it/biblioteca/g/galilei/lettere/html/lett08c.htm, also from IntraText http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ITA0188/_PQ.HTM.
Variant translation: In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
As quoted in Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859) by François Arago, as translated by Baden Powell, Robert Grant, and William Fairbairn, p. 365
Other quotes
Variant: In the sciences, the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man.
Context: for in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.

Science

“Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Feeling

“Question for God every morning:

What is the main event today? What do you want me to focus on today?”

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

God

“Do you want to go along with others? or go on ahead? or go off on your own?… you must knowyou want andyou want. Fourth question for the conscience.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Source: Twilight of the Idols

“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions — as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 41
The Gay Science (1882)

Failure , Success

“To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Epilogue, p. 242
Out of My Life and Thought : An Autobiography (1933)

Hope , Knowledge

“Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent," said Miss Susan. "But answers do.”

Terry Pratchett book Thief of Time

Source: Thief of Time

Sense

“An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Source: Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (1949)
Context: Experimenters are the schocktroops of science… An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature’s answer. But before an experiment can be performed, it must be planned – the question to nature must be formulated before being posed. Before the result of a measurement can be used, it must be interpreted – Nature’s answer must be understood properly. These two tasks are those of theorists, who find himself always more and more dependent on the tools of abstract mathematics.

Nature , Science

“And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Four (16 July 1903)
Variant: Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. (Translation by Stephen Mitchell)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Context: Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Distant

“When someone refuses to tell me a certain piece of information, it only makes me that much more determined to find out the truth. I hate being ignorant. For me, a question unanswered is like a thorn in my side”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Hate , Truth

“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.”

Stephen King Pet Sematary

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.

“All male friendships are essentially quixotic: they last only so long as each man is willing to polish the shaving-bowl helmet, climb on his donkey, and ride off after the other in pursuit of illusive glory and questionable adventure.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Source: Wonder Boys

Friendship

“… you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Source: A Fine Balance

Hope , Failure , Success , Despair

“We are all carrying so many things in our life and inside ourselves. Often it feels there is no place to put them down. Where do you place the questions you carry”

Sabrina Ward Harrison (1975) Canadian writer

Source: Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself

Life , Feeling

“It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Source: The Second Sex

Sex , Feeling , Understanding , Nature

“If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

People , Stupidity , Time , Funny

“Reality offers us such wealth that we must cut some of it out on the spot, simplify. The question is, do we always cut out what we should? ”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Reality , Wealth

“He was evidently the sort of person who posed questions that were traps for you to fall into.”

Alice Munro (1931) Canadian novelist

Personality

“Once they have you asking the wrong questions. They don't have to worry about the answers.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Variant: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
Source: Gravity's Rainbow

“One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism

Motivation

“Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like 'What is my purpose in life?' very quickly lacked both.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: Interesting Times: The Play

Life , Nature

“Everything in life in nonsense. It's just a question of persepctive”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Life

“What strange, perplexing, questionable questions!”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Beyond Good and Evil

“A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

As quoted in Funny Ladies (2001), by B. Adler, p. 147

Sleep

“If more government is the answer, then it was a really stupid question.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Stupidity

“But then science is nothing but a series of questions that lead to more questions.”

Terry Pratchett The Long Earth

Source: The Long Earth

Science

“Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana Metanova, and you will know who you are. Ask: What do believe in? What do you hope for? What do you love?”

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

Variant: Ask yourself three questions and you will know who you are. Ask 'What do you believe in? What do you hope for? But most important - ask what do you love?
Source: The Bronze Horseman (2001)

Love , Hope

“Experience is a question of instinct about life.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan

Life

“It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant: It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

“I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.”

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist

Source: The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)

“Love asks me no questions, and gives me endless support.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

love , Love , Support

“Go anywhere you wish, talk to everyone. Ask any questions; you will be given answers. When you want to learn, you will be taught. Use the library. Open any book.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Books , Learning

“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Variant: Then she kissed him. Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.
Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 11

love , Relationship , Good Night , Cute

“Life has been some combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Life , Beauty , Hurt

“In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Way , Change , Personality

“Ask yourself a question: Is my attitude worth catching?”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

“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

“Silence can ask all the questions, where the tongue is prone to ask only the wrong one.”

Robin Hobb book Fool's Errand

Source: Fool's Errand

Silence

“Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael

Faith , Faith

“Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: I appeal to history. Among the generals of Washington in the Revolutionary War were Greene, Putnam, and Lee, who were of English descent; Wayne and Sullivan, who were of Irish descent; Marion, who was of French descent; Schuyler, who was of Dutch descent, and Muhlenberg and Herkimer, who were of German descent. But they were all of them Americans and nothing else, just as much as Washington. Carroll of Carrollton was a Catholic; Hancock a Protestant; Jefferson was heterodox from the standpoint of any orthodox creed; but these and all the other signers of the Declaration of Independence stood on an equality of duty and right and liberty, as Americans and nothing else.
Context: The line of cleavage drawn on principle and conduct in public affairs is never in any healthy community identical with the line of cleavage between creed and creed or between class and class. On the contrary, where the community life is healthy, these lines of cleavage almost always run nearly at right angles to one another. It is eminently necessary to all of us that we should have able and honest public officials in the nation, in the city, in the state. If we make a serious and resolute effort to get such officials of the right kind, men who shall not only be honest but shall be able and shall take the right view of public questions, we will find as a matter of fact that the men we thus choose will be drawn from the professors of every creed and from among men who do not adhere to any creed.

“My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world's most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular level.”

Michael H. Hart (1932) American astronomer

Muhammad
Source: About Muhammad, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, p.3

History , World , Success , Personality

“i have never pondered over questions that are not questions.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo

“My 'morals' were sound, even a bit puritanic, but when a hidebound old deacon inveighed against dancing I rebelled. By the time of graduation I was still a 'believer' in orthodox religion, but had strong questions which were encouraged at Harvard. In Germany I became a freethinker and when I came to teach at an orthodox Methodist Negro school I was soon regarded with suspicion, especially when I refused to lead the students in public prayer. When I became head of a department at Atlanta, the engagement was held up because again I balked at leading in prayer. I refused to teach Sunday school. When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war..”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Source: The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century

War , School , Religion , Color

“Are you one who looks on? or lends a hand? - or who looks away, sidles off?… Third question for the conscience.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Source: Twilight of the Idols

“Hester, in the dark conclusion of Hawthorne's brooding novel, reassumes the Puritan mantle…. Hawthorne thus captures the catch-22 of feminism: the very woman who is able to envision a new order of living is, by the same token, unable, since the passion that enables her also adulterates her in the eyes of the Puritans. Released from goodness, she is imprisoned in badness, within the framework of the puritanical order. But her mind is free to question the order.”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Source: Joining the Resistance

Passion

“Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it's knowledge and questions.”

Roberto Bolaño book 2666

Source: 2666

Pleasure , Sadness , Knowledge , Reading

“The purpose of this lectchoor is to let you know where we are. We are in the deep cack. It couldn't be worse if it was raining arseholes. Any questions?”

Terry Pratchett book Monstrous Regiment

Source: Monstrous Regiment

“For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed.

The riddle does not exist.

If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Source: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“The great question which, in all ages, has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of their mischiefs… has been, not whether be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.”

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Age , World , Parting

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer … It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.
We are, and always will be, the United States of America.
It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, Election victory speech (November 2008)

World , Fear , Dreams , Hope

“Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.”

Saul Bellow book Herzog

Source: Herzog

Stupidity

“Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?”

Jeremy Bentham book An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Source: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 17 : Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence
Source: The Principles of Morals and Legislation
Context: The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?

Suffering