Quotes about doubt (5301 quotes, page 52)

“We have no time, we have no space,
we are questions that love answers,
but the veil of truth don't lift.
In the edge of abyss,
people really meet themselves,
when they're staring at nothingness,
and then they understand
that we are, 'birds of passage'.”

alexis karpouzos

spirituality and consciousness

Time , Understanding , People , Truth

“Europe is a commercial giant and an economic power of the first rank, but it is a political dwarf. Political cooperation in the Community will grow. The question is whether the supply services will follow.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

Speech to the press (3 December 1980), quoted in The Times (4 December 1980), p. 5
Member of the European Parliament

Communication

“Jesus does not advocate revolt or material conflict. ... He reverses the question, and as so often challenges his interlocutors: "But you ... it must not be the same among you."”

Jacques Ellul book Anarchy and Christianity

In other words, do not be so concerned about fighting kings. Let them be. Set up a marginal society which will not be interested in such things, in which there will be no power, authority or hierarchy. Do not do things as they are usually done in society, which you cannot change. Create another society on another foundation.

p. 62
Anarchy and Christianity (1988)

“Impossible questions require impossible answers.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Alexander, sec. 54
Parallel Lives

“... the most important questions and insights and goals are unpredictable.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

email sent to David Brown, 1 January 2020, quoted in [Freeman Dyson - Science and Religion (151/157) (comments section), 27 July 2016, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwoVrSICaTA] (published by Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People)

“The question is: is “democracy” still democratic?”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Speeches

Democracy

“Everyone has talent. The question is how do we find it, and how do we nurture it?”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Vincennes University (December 2019)

“The way a question is asked limits and disposes the ways in which any answer to it—right or wrong—may be given.”

Susanne K. Langer book Philosophy in a New Key

Source: Philosophy in a New Key (1942), Ch. 1, p. 1

Way

“Life's big questions are big in the sense that they are momentous. However, contrary to appearances, they are not big in the sense of being unanswerable. It is only that the answers are generally unpalatable. There is no great mystery, but there is plenty of horror.”

David Benatar (1966) South African philosopher

Source: The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (2017), Introduction, p. 7

Sense , Life , Appearance

“My complete answer to the late 19th century question, "what is electrodynamics trying to tell us" would simply be this: Fields in empty space have physical reality; the medium that supports them does not.”

David Mermin (1935) American physicist

Support , Reality

“But yet he was reputed one of the wise men, that made answer to the question, when a man should marry,—A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Marriage and Single Life

Men

“Life is full of questions, and we are free to ask them, to understand, occasionally, that we are not going to get an answer, or at least not the answer we expect, and then we are called to move on. But I believe that God encourages us to ask questions.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

The Rock that Is Higher (1993)

God , Life , Understanding

“There are three great questions which in life we have over and over again to answer. Is it right or wrong? Is it true or false? Is it beautiful or ugly? Our education ought to help us to answer these questions.”

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury book The Use of Life

The Use of Life (1894), ch. VI: National Education
Source: The Use of Life http://archive.org/details/uselife02lubbgoog/page/n114/mode/2up on Archive.Org, pages 102—103

Beauty , Help , Falseness , Education

“I would have told you that three or four days ago, but we never had a chance, because you never asked me the question.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump, about taking the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to prevent Covid-19 disease, as quoted in * 2020-05-18
FDA: This Drug Could Kill You. Trump: I’m Taking It!
Justin Paragona, Adam Rawnsley
The Daily Beast
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-reveals-hes-now-taking-unproven-anti-malarial-drug-fda-warned-against
2020s, 2020, May

Chance

“Ask a simple question, get a simple brick wall.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Chapter 3 (p. 44) Vorkosigan Saga, The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)

“Ask questions stubbornly, very proud men who seeing themselves right without knowing anything about the matter. This shows lack of piety, a tendency to ranting, a weak mind, and excessive vanity. [...] If you hear, or read writing (you object to), do not react with violence until you have proof that what is expressed is wrong. Do not accept that with the enthusiasm of the credulous man either until being wholly convinced of that. In both situations you blind yourself and drift away from truth… Act like a person who has no preconceived views, one ready to know and accept what is right and reject what is wrong.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

ibid, 116

Reading , Personality , Truth , Men

“We don't have much time left. We are moving towards temperature increases of around two degrees Celsius, which is going to have consequences in the tropics, and we will loose things like glaciers. That's not a theory; it's happening right now. It's not a prediction; it's happening right now. But you just sightsee near those glaciers. But the glaciers are a big source of water. And on the questions of water, in California we store our water in a snowpack. When that's gone, the rain will be the same but it won't accumulate. With warming temperatures the snowpack will now work. It might be possible to substitute with dams, but that's complicated. This is conjoined with a big energy problem and I think that we really have to encourage development in this area. Just waiting for technological improvement won't work. We need to encourage it.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

quoted in Conor Clarke, An Interview with Kenneth Arrow, Part Three https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/07/an-interview-with-kenneth-arrow-part-three/22330/ (2009)
New millennium

Time , Waiting , Problem , Water

“I come now to the question of diplomatic personnel. ... It is said that I am admitting to the service Eton and Harrow. I am not one of those who decry Eton and Harrow. I was very glad of them in the Battle of Britain—by God, I was!—those fellows paid the price in the Royal Air Force on those fatal days. If the Universities are to be criticized, well, put up a vote of censure on Harold Laski, because it is the product of the Universities I have got to accept.”

Ernest Bevin (1881–1951) British labour leader, politician, and statesman

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth (12 June 1946), quoted in British Information Services, British Speeches of the Day, Vol. IV (1946), pp. 423-424

Universe , God

“We learn about worlds when they do not accommodate us. Not being accommodated can be pedagogy. We generate ideas through the struggles we have to be in the world; we come to question worlds when we are in question. When a question becomes a place you reside in, everything can be thrown into question: explanations you might have handy that allow you to make sense or navigate your way through unfamiliar as well as familiar landscapes no longer work.”

Sara Ahmed (1969) Australian and British academic

Source: "An Affinity of Hammers" (2016), p. 22

Learning , World , Way , Sense

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

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

Imagination , Problem , Mathematics , Science

“Ther are not two sides to any question that really concerns a man, but only one, and this side only a fool can fail to see if he tries.”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Aurea Dicta XX, p. 8.
The Rod, the Root, and the Flower (1895)

Fools

“The first thinker was, without a doubt, the first man obsessed by why. An unaccustomed mania, not at all contagious: rare indeed are those who suffer from it, who are a prey to questioning, and who can accept no given because they were born in consternation.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Suffering

“Everything in my life has happened by trial and error, so where's the question of thinking I'd come this far.”

Nedim Jahić (2001) Bosnian singer

Life , Error , Thinking

“To demonize all Soviet "leaders" at all levels, to portray them as unqualified villains and evildoers, unprincipled self-seeking scoundrels who were indifferent to the interests and needs of the people — that is a shallow and frivolous approach. Of course there were villains, quite a few of them. But most of those who came to power had the intention of serving the "toiling masses" from which they themselves had come. That the system rendered their aspirations useless, reduced their efforts to nothing, and ultimately snuffed out their finer impulses — that is a separate question.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

Indifference , People , Self-confidence , Effort

“…I remember as a child holding these long notes, so there’s something that’s already there. But I do think it’s a constant question of knowing and taking care of yourself. It doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have a tequila or a mezcal once in a while…In my case, it’s very important to have it because through that you express the emotion you have from within. Sometimes that gives you some more secrets about how to handle your instruments.”

Lila Downs (1968) Mexican American singer-songwriter

On her vocal style in “Lila Downs Reminds Us of the Strength Women Bring to Latin America and its History” https://sheshredsmag.com/lila-downs-14/ in She Shreds (2018 May 3)
Music and culture

Secret , Thinking

“To radicalize the question of phenomenology is not only to aim for a pure phenomenality but to seek out the mode according to which it originally becomes a phenomenon -- the substance, the stuff, the phenomenological matter of which it is made, its phenomenologically pure materiality. That is the task of material phenomenology. Prior to this being-toward-the-outside in which everything is properly speaking placed outside of itself and in which every reality is a priori emptied and dispossessed of itself and thus becomes its contrary, an irreality, and prior to the abandonment and undoing that is called death and that would be unable to exist on its own, material phenomenology is devoted to the discovery of the reign of a phenomenality that is constructed in such a surprising way that the thought that always thinks about the world never thinks about it. To the internal structure of this originary manifestation, there belongs no Outside, no Separation, no Ek-stasis. Its phenomenological substance is not visibility. None of the categories that have been used by philosophy since the Greeks at any rate, are appropriate for it.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Source: Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 2
Source: Books on Phenomenology and Life, Material Phenomenology (1990)

Thinking , Way , Reality , World

“The task of material phenomenology is immense. It is not simply to be attached to another order of phenomena that remained neglected up to now but to rethink everything, if one can think reality. Every sphere of reality must become the object of a new analysis that goes back to its invisible dimension. And this concerns material nature as well, which is a living cosmos. Since material phenomenology implies the revival of philosophical questioning in its entirety, it offers a future to phenomenology and to philosophy itself. At the same time, it discovers a new past.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Source: Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 6
Source: Books on Phenomenology and Life, Material Phenomenology (1990)

Time , Past , Future , Nature

“The question of phenomenology, which alone confers a proper object to philosophy, is what makes it into an autonomous discipline -- the fundamental discipline of knowledge -- and not just a mere reflexion after the fact on what the other sciences have found. This question is no longer concerned with the phenomena but the mode of their givenness, their phenomenality, not with what appears but with appearing. The invaluable contribution of historical phenomenology is to become aware of this appearing and to analyze it in and of itself. This is its theme. Again, this must not simply be the repetition of the traditional philosophical problem of consciousness or the greek aletheia. For the illusion of common sense, science and past philosophies is to understand the being of the phenomenon always as a first putting at a distance, the arrival of an Outside in which everything becomes visible, a "phenomenon", in the light of this Outside.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Source: Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 2
Source: Books on Phenomenology and Life, Material Phenomenology (1990)

Understanding , Light , Past , Knowledge

“All my life I have been a pacifist. All my life I have hated war and loved peace. I have contributed to peace societies, written for peace, spoken for peace, paraded for peace. But today I seriously question whether our ways of seeking peace are not playing directly into the hands of those who love war and intend to pursue it.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 33

Peace , Hate , War , Way

“One thing we have endeavoured to observe most scrupulously, namely, never to depart from the strictest facts and, in dealing with the difficult questions that have arisen during the year, we hope that we have used the utmost moderation possible under the circumstances. Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt. Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding between the two communities in South Africa can be removed.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Source: Indian Opinion (1 October 1903)

Hurt , God , Faith , Hope

“I'm your narrator. It's my task to say
Just where and how things happen in our play,
Set the bare stage with words instead of props
And keep on talking till the curtain drops. …
It's an old task — old as the human heart,
Old as those bygone players and their art
Who, in old days when faith was nearer earth,
Played out the mystery of Jesus' birth
In hall or village green or market square
For all who chose to come and see them there,
And, if they knew that King Herod, in his crown,
Was really Wat, the cobbler of the town,
And Tom, the fool, played Abraham the Wise,
They did not care. They saw with other eyes.
The story was their own — not far away,
As real as if it happened yesterday,
Full of all awe and wonder yet so near,
A marvelous thing that could have happened here
In their own town — a star that could have blazed
On their own shepherds, leaving them amazed,
Frightened and questioning and following still
To the bare stable — and the miracle.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Narrator
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

Faith , Star , Heart , Fools

“Opinion has been right to fasten upon sovereignty as the central issue. Either British entry is a declaration of intent to surrender this country's sovereignty, stage by stage, in all that matters as a nation, and makes a nation, or else it is an empty gesture, disgraceful in its hollowness alike to those who proffer and to whose who accept it. The superior people laugh at those who talk about losing our Queen and our Monarchy. ... The Queen is the Queen in Parliament, as truly today as when her predecessor, Tudor Henry, observed that ‘we are nowhere so high in our estate royal as in this Our High Court of Parliament’. The question which the people of this country will have proposed to them is: will you, or will you not, continue to be governed by the Queen in Parliament? It is no less than that, and they have understood it.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech in Doncaster (19 June 1971), quoted in The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (1973), p. 119

Country , Making love , People

“There's a moment in everybody's life...where you have more past than future, and then you better start organizing your time. So I thought maybe this is the time to do this. I'm not keen on people following me and recording my life and asking personal questions and what-not, but I figured I had to do it.”

Rubén Blades (1948) Panamanian musician, singer, composer, actor, activist, and politician

Source: On the documentary Ruben Blades Is Not My Name in "Inside Ruben Blades: New Documentary Showcases the Man Behind the Music" https://afropop.org/articles/inside-ruben-blades-new-documentary-showcases-the-man-behind-the-music in Afropop Worldwide (2018 Apr 10)

Time , Past , Future , Personality

“So that as I tried to say in my speech, we are not faced with the question of balancing our budget, or having a tax reduction. I believe we are faced with the fact that we are going to have a deficit mostly because of the sharp rise in the recent years in space and defense, and to increase our taxes sufficient to bring that budget into balance would be defeating, because of course it would provide a heavy deflationary effect on our economy, and move us into a recession at an accelerated rate.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

“I must painfully record my opinion that grave injury has been done to religion in many minds — not in instructed minds, but in those which are ill-instructed or partially instructed, which have a large claim on our consideration — in consequence of steps which have, unhappily, been taken. Great mischief has been done in many minds through the resistance offered to the man elected by the constituency of Northampton, which a portion of the community believe to be unjust. When they see the profession of religion and the interests of religion ostensibly associated with what they are deeply convinced is injustice, they are led to questions about religion itself, which they see to be associated with injustice. Unbelief attracts a sympathy which it would not otherwise enjoy; and the upshot is to impair those convictions and that religious faith, the loss of which I believe to be the most inexpressible calamity which can fall either upon a man or upon a nation.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

1880s
Source: Except from a speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1883/apr/26/second-reading-adjourned-debate-second in the House of Commons (26 April 1883) in support of the atheist Charles Bradlaugh being permitted to take his seat in Parliament.

Loss , Faith , Religion , Communication

“The thing we really need to fix is ourselves. It's not about the fish; it's not about the pollution; it's not about the climate change. It's about us and our greed and our need for growth and our inability to imagine a world that is different from the selfish world we live in today. So the question is: Will we respond to this or not? I would say that the future of life and the dignity of human beings depends on our doing that.”

Jeremy Jackson (scientist) (1942) American marine biologist

Source: How we wrecked the ocean https://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_jackson_how_we_wrecked_the_ocean (April 2010)

Selfishness , Imagination , Dependency , Future

“I know you're not a stupid person, so why would you ask such a stunningly stupid question?”

Carl Hiaasen book Squeeze Me

Source: Novels, Squeeze Me (2020), Chapter 28

Personality , Stupidity

“But I will not... trouble you with what I have largely discoursed in the Sceptical Chymist, to call in question the grounds on which Chymists assert, that all mixt bodies are compounded of Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury. For it may suffice me now to tell you that, whatsoever they may be able to obtain from other bodies, it does not appear by Experience, which is the grand, if not the onely, Argument they rely on, that all mixt bodies that have Qualities consist of their tria prima, since they have not been able, that we know, truly, and without new Compositions, to resolve into those three, either Gold, or Silver, or Crystal, or Venetian Talck, or some other bodies, that I elsewhere name; & yet these bodies are endowed with divers Qualities, as the two former with Fusibleness and Malleability, and all of them with Weight and Fixity; so that in these and the like bodies, whence Chymisats have not made it yet appear, that their Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, can be truly and adequately separated, 'twill scarce be other than precarious to derive the malleableness, colour, and other Qualities of such bodies from those Principles.”

Robert Boyle (1627–1691) English natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor

Of the Imperfection of The Chymist's Doctrine of Qualities (1675)

Appearance

“With regard to domestic policy, the current burning issue is the racial question. Also in this field we will adopt the necessary solutions. Those who believe that we have obediently imitated anyone, or worse, acted on suggestions, are poor fools toward whom we do not know if we should direct our contempt or our pity. The racial problem did not suddenly burst out of nowhere, as those who are accustomed to brusque awakenings think — since they are used to long armchair naps. It is in relation to imperial conquest; because history teaches us that empires are conquered by arms but are held by prestige. And for prestige it is necessary to have a clear, severe racial consciousness, that establishes not only the differences, but also very clear superiorities.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Speech held in Trieste (September 18, 1938)
Source: Il discorso di Trieste, archivioluce, 2021-01-04 https://www.archivioluce.com/2019/09/18/il-discorso-di-trieste/,

History , Fools , Problem , Thinking

“Hope is different from belief. Belief is a function of the mind. It is something which, on the mental level, appears to you to be true, valuable, magnetic, attractive – a set of ideas which together make an ideology in which you can believe. It seems to answer the problems of life, to provide answers to various questions which arise about the meaning, the purpose, of life, and so on. That is a very different thing from hope.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: Maitreya's Mission Vol. II (1993)

Hope , Problem , Appearance , Idea

“The evil of storytelling is you’re trying to make the audience complicit in murder — Kill the guy! Jump him! And then once you’ve done it, it’s like, I’ve killed this guy, now what? If you do that kind of violence in a show like this, you have to bring the audience along with you and then question their judgement.”

Bruno Heller (1960) British screenwriter

The Mentalist Finale Interview https://ew.com/article/2011/05/26/the-mentalist-finale/ (May 26, 2011)

Guy , Making love , Evil

“Western civilization, unfortunately, does not link knowledge and morality but rather, it connects knowledge and power and makes them equivalent. Today with an information "superhighway" now looming on the horizon, we are told that a lack of access to information will doom people to a life of meaninglessness — and poverty. As we look around and observe modern industrial society, however, there is no question that information, in and of itself, is useless and that as more data is generated, ethical and moral decisions are taking on a fantasy dimension in which a "lack of evidence to indict" is the moral equivalent of the good deed.”

Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005) American writer

Foreword to Words of Power: Voices from Indian America (1994), also quoted in "Vine Deloria, Jr." at Indigenous Peoples Literature (2015) by Glen Welker http://www.indigenouspeople.net/vine.htm

People , Knowledge , Decision , Life

“We are curious, we ask questions, we read and research and connect with others who know more than we do. Then we fumble to record the answers the best we can, and we discover that we understand things better because we try to write about them with candor and clarity. Questions just keep bubbling up all the time.”

Diana Pavlac Glyer (1956) British writer

Interview With Colin Duriez and Diana Glyer https://thecultivatingproject.com/interview-with-colin-duriez-and-diana-glyer/ (August 24, 2015)

Understanding , Time , Reading

“Folks, this is a time of testing. We face an attack on our democracy and on truth. A raging virus, growing inequity, the sting of systemic racism, a climate in crisis. America′s role in the world. Any one of these would be enough to challenge us in profound ways. But the fact is, we face them all at once. Presenting this nation with one of the gravest responsibilities we′ve had. Now we′re going to be tested.Are we going to step up, all of us? It′s time for boldness, for there is so much to do. And this is certain. I promise you, we will be judged, you and I, by how we resolve these cascading crises of our era. We will rise to the occasion, is the question. Will we master this rare and difficult hour?”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Democracy , Time , Truth , World

“There was no question that I was deeply afraid of what might happen to me if the "condition" continued. I was much more concerned about the possibility of a growing mental illness than a physical deterioration. I had studied enough psychology and had enough psychologist and psychiatrist friends to compound such fears. Moreover, I was afraid to discuss the matter with these friends. I was afraid that I would then be classified as their "patients," and lose the closeness that equality (normalcy) brings. Non-professional friends in business and community would be worse. I would be labeled a freak or psychotic, which could seriously affect my life and the lives of those close to me. Finally, it seemed to be something to keep from my family. It seemed unnecessary that they worry along with me.”

Robert Monroe (1915–1995) American founder of The Monroe Institute

Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 2. Search and Research

Family , Life , Study , Business

“The question posed most often is: How do you know you aren't dreaming, that what you experience is nothing more than a vivid dream or a hallucination of some sort?”

Robert Monroe (1915–1995) American founder of The Monroe Institute

Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 14. Mind and Supermind

Dreams

“We're all born with curiosity, but at some point, school usually manages to knock that out of us. ...[M]y main responsibility as a teacher isn't to convey facts, but to rekindle that lost enthusiasm for asking questions.”

Max Tegmark book Our Mathematical Universe

Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2014)

School , Teachers

“If you think about things that happen, as being computations... a computation in the sense that it has definite rules... You follow them many steps and you get some result. ...If you look at all these different computations that can happen, whether... in the natural world... in our brains... in our mathematics, whatever else, the big question is how do these computations compare. ...Are there dumb ...and smart computations, or are they somehow all equivalent? ...[T]he thing that I ...was ...surprised to realize from ...experiments ...in the early 90s, and now we have tons more evidence for ...[is] this ...principle of computational equivalence, which basically says that when one of these computations ...doesn't seem like it's doing something obviously simple, then it has reached this ...equivalent layer of computational sophistication of everything. So what does that mean? ...You might say that ...I'm studying this tiny little program ...and my brain is surely much smarter ...I'm going to be able to systematically outrun [it] because I have a more sophisticated computation ...but ...the principle ...says ...that doesn't work. Our brains are doing computations that are exactly equivalent to the kinds of computations that are being done in all these other sorts of systems. ...It means that we can't systematically outrun these systems. These systems are computationally irreducible in the sense that there's no ...shortcut ...that jumps to the answer.”

Stephen Wolfram (1959) British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physicist, writer and businessman

Stephen Wolfram: Fundamental Theory of Physics, Life, and the Universe (Sep 15, 2020)

Study , Nature , World , Thinking

“[Nature] turns us out into the world without giving us any choice in the matter; though all other suffrages and freedoms are perfectly insignificant in comparison with that of which we are thus deprived, an effective and enlightened vote on the question: Shall I, or shall I not, be born?”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part II, p. 62
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

World , Nature , Freedom

“When it is a child you ask a lot of questions and ask for answers. When you are an adult you avoid many questions, to avoid unnecessary answers.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Quando si è bimbi si fanno tante domande pretendendo altrettante risposte. Quando si è adulti si evitano molte domande, per evitare inutili risposte.
Source: prevale.net

“Not here to worship what is known, but to question it.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

“Without an alliance with non-Communists in the most diverse spheres of activity there can be no question of any successful communist construction.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“On the Significance of Militant Materialism” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/12.htm, (12 March 1922)
1920s

Success

“I know—as we all do—very little of the practice and the spoken and written doctrine of former times on the subject of non-resistance to evil. I knew what had been said on the subject by the fathers of the Church—Origen, Tertullian, and others—I knew too of the existence of some so-called sects of Mennonites, Herrnhuters, and Quakers, who do not allow a Christian the use of weapons, and do not enter military service; but I knew little of what had been done by these so-called sects toward expounding the question.”

Leo Tolstoy The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Preface
The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894)

Time , Evil

“The questions that keep us up at night are the questions which drive us during the day.”

Isaac Mashman (2000) businessman, speaker

Night

“My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus.”

Michael Haneke (1942) Austrian film director and screenwriter

From "Film as catharsis". Haneke, Michael – "Film als Katharsis": in Austria (in)felix: zum österreichischem Film der 80er Jahre – Bono, Francesco (ed.), 1992. ISBN 3-901272-00-3

Falseness

“Take a serious look at yourself. Ask yourself questions about your mood, the way you view the world and people, think about your mistakes and the dangers they unleash. Today the character of a person determines whether he can exercise influence and authority, far more than all the minds on this earth. As you know, this is all the more true in Belgium, and Belgians want to see in their leader the qualities they will never want from themselves.”

Leopold I of Belgium (1790–1865) German prince who became the first King of the Belgians

https://klara.be/leopold-ii-aflevering-2-0 Leopold I In a letter to his son Prince Leopold II

Personality , People , Thinking , Way

“Do the essences of proposition and of the truth determine themselves from out of the essence of the thing, or does the essence of the thing determine itself from out of the essence of the proposition? The question is posed as an either/or. However does this either/or itself suffice? Are the essence of the thing and the essence of the proposition only built as mirror images because both of them together determine themselves from out of the same but deeper lying root? However, what and where can be this common ground for the essence of the thing and of the proposition and of their origin? The unconditioned (Unbedingt)? We stated at the beginning that what conditions the essense of the thing in its thingness can no longer itself be thing and conditioned, it must be an unconditioned (Un-bedingtes). p. 47”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

What Is A Thing? (1935, 1968)

Truth , Lying

“Achieving strategic clarity is hard. It takes asking tough questions about tradeoffs, deep concentration to get to the very essence of the issues and real courage to cut off competing priorities. It is worth the effort because with real clarity, people, teams and organizations can fully mobilize, break through to the next level and achieve something truly great.”

Greg McKeown (author) book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Popular Quotes, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Journal Articles

Courage , Effort , People

“The unsolicited promise is one of the most reliable signals because it is nearly always of questionable motive.”

Gavin de Becker book The Gift of Fear

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Motivation

“If questioning something endangers its existence, extinction is probably in its future.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

Future

“You never ask questions When God's on your side”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin (1964), With God On Our Side

God

“Most things that we and the people around us do constantly… have come to seem so natural and inevitable that merely to pose the question, 'Why are we doing this?”

Alfie Kohn book Punished by Rewards

can strike us as perplexing – and also, perhaps, a little unsettling. On general principle, it is a good idea to challenge ourselves in this way about anything we have come to take for granted; the more habitual, the more valuable this line of inquiry.
Punished by Rewards

People , Nature

“I know that God only works for good in the lives of His children. Our responsibility is to search for God's will, find it, and do it to the best of our imperfect ability. The outcome is already decided. And it is always for good. As a matter of faith, I never question outcomes.”

L. Lin Wood (1952) American lawyer

20 May 2021 https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1395227279748255745/photo/1

Search , God , Faith , Children

“So imagine somebody who has Donald's charisma, but first rate management skills... actually knows how to be an executive and get things done, how to prioritize, how to follow-up, how to select people and hold them accountable, and who doesn't believe you should be able to question what he does.”

David Cay Johnston (1948) Investigative journalist and author

The Tyrant Next Time (November 7, 2019)

Imagination , People

“Philosophy of science can bring a strong array of analytical and synthetic tools to questions of ultimate causation, ultimate reality and “the whole of reality” because these questions are both physical and metaphysical—entailing methodological procedures from both science and philosophy.”

Robert Spitzer (priest) (1952) American Jesuit priest, scholar and educator

Can scientific methods prove the existence of God? https://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/god-and-science-qa-robert-spitzer-sj (December 29, 2015)

Strong , Science , Reality

“There may be, and there ought to be, progress in the moral sphere. The moral truths which we have inherited from the past need to be expanded and restated. In times of misfortune we require for our support something of which the truth is beyond all question, in which we can put an implicit trust, " though the heavens should fall."”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

A merely borrowed belief is, at such time, like a rotten plank across a raging torrent. The moment we step upon it, it gives way beneath our feet.
Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Life and Destiny (1913)

Truth , Time , Support , Past

“The question what to believe is perhaps the most momentous that anyone can put to himself. Our beliefs are not to be classed among the luxuries, but among the necessaries of existence. They become particularly important in times of trouble. They are like the life-boats carried by ocean ships. As long as the sea is smooth and there is every appearance of a prosperous voyage, the passengers seldom take note of the boats or inquire into their sea-worthiness. But when the storm breaks and danger approaches, then the capacity of the boats and their soundness become matters of the first importance.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Life and Destiny (1913)

Time , Appearance , Relation ships , Sea

“Our loss, indeed, will always remain loss, and no preaching or teaching can ever make it otherwise. But the question is whether it shall weaken and embitter, or strengthen and purify us, and lead us to raise to the dead we mourn a monument in our lives that shall be better than any pillared chapel or storied marble tomb.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 8 : Suffering and Consolation
Life and Destiny (1913)

Loss , Making love , Dead

“No physicist could tolerate religious dogma or extremism, but I have found that Christianity provides answers to the deeper questions about life and purpose which are beyond the range of science to answer.”

Antony Hewish (1924–2021) English physicist and radio astronomer

Antony Hewish Interview https://www.countercurrents.org/ziabari171012.htm (17 October, 2012)

Science , Life

“In every case, here's the challenging bottom line: practicing tough love is- without question- toughest on the man who loves the most.”

William G. Boykin (1948) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Source: Man to Man: Rediscovering Masculinity in a Challenging World (2020), p. 99

Love , Making love

“The size of our hips, our style, our swag, it becomes co-opted but then we are demonised... My advice to young women is that you have to start by getting those demons out of your head. The questions I ask myself — "am I good enough?"”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

that haunts us, because the messages that are sent from the time we are little is: maybe you are not, don't reach too high, don't talk too loud.
Interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (3 December 2018) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46434147
2010s

Women

“We live in a world of instant communication and the amount of information that comes our way can be overwhelming. The questions of what’s important in life, what is life-giving etc. can often be missed. So my message is simple, and it sometimes comes up at Mass: "Judge wisely the things of earth and measure them against the values of heaven."”

George Stack (1946) Irish Roman Catholic archbishop

Heart Talk : Archbishop George Stack https://www.shalomworld.org/episode/archbishop-george-stack (4 March 2018)

World , Way , Life , Communication

“Question, believe, or lose your mind.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

“Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Men

“A man may fulfil the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

“The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.”

Peter Abelard (1079–1142) French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician

Variant: The key to wisdom is this - constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.

Truth , Wisdom

“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

Waiting , Learning , Peaceful

“Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Success , People

“The question was whether the Liberal Party was going to be merely a political party which is "the Keeper of the Doctrines."”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Its sole business would be to see that no man should stray. It would become purely a political sect, strictly, sternly, severely, painfully orthodox, and painfully select. If that was to be its rôle it would dwindle from generation to generation and decade to decade, until it would only have representation amongst the more tenacious races, to one of which he belonged.
Speech in Oxford Town Hall (6 August 1924), quoted in The Times (7 August 1924), p. 14
Leader of the National Liberal Party

“First of all one has to answer the question of why the painful experiences that man must undergo are called "trials."”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

We would reply that these experiences are trials in relation to our faith, which indicates that with regard to troubling or painful experiences we have duties resulting from our human vocation; in other words, we must prove our faith in relation to God and in relation to ourselves. In relation to God, by our intelligence, our sense of the absolute, and thus our sense of relativities and proportions; and in relation to ourselves, by our character, our resignation to destiny, our gratitude. There are in fact two ways to overcome the traces that evil, or more precisely suffering, leaves in the soul: these are, firstly, our awareness of the Sovereign Good, which coincides with our hope to the extent that this awareness penetrates us; and secondly, our acceptance of what, in religious language, is called the "will of God"; and assuredly it is a great victory over oneself to accept a destiny because it is God's will and for no other reason.
[2003, Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism, World Wisdom, 215, 978-0-94153227-3]
Spiritual life, Trials

Pain

“Peace and prosperity were possible only if people stopped asking new questions and accepted the available answers.”

John Twelve Hawks book The Traveler

Source: Fourth Realm Trilogy (2005-2009), The Traveler (2005), Ch. 2

Peace , People

“When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.”

Clive Staples Lewis book A Grief Observed

It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.'
A Grief Observed (1961)

God

“The question to ask believers is this: “Does it really matter whether what you believe about God is true—or don’t you care?””

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

If it does matter, then you must justify your beliefs; if it doesn’t, then you must justify belief itself.
Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 63

God

“To love means to give oneself unconditionally without asking any question.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Amare vuol dire donarsi incondizionatamente senza farsi alcuna domanda.
Source: prevale.net

Love

“Love exists. It's in the little things: simple, spontaneous and concrete. It's in a smile, in a job, in a song…. Love is all that is given without asking any question.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) L'amore esiste. È nelle piccole cose: semplici, spontanee e concrete. È in un sorriso, in un lavoro, in una canzone... . L'amore, è tutto ciò che si dona senza porsi alcuna domanda.
Source: prevale.net

Smile , Love

“An intelligent person questions everything, even himself.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Una persona intelligente mette in discussione tutto, anche se stessa.
Source: prevale.net

Personality , Intelligence

“What happens today, Is a better change tomorrow.

Life is a circle which starts from a point 0 degree (the day your given birth to) and revolves in it's axis (around); people determine where they will end up. The question is do people lifes end up good?”

Bhad Shazzy

People , Birth , Change , Life

“I am sure I speak for all my sisters when I say that we prefer to be known as directors, not just as women directors. To the eternal question that I am plagued with — what is the main disadvantage of being a woman director — my answer is: being endlessly harangued with this very question”

Sai Paranjpye (1938) Indian film director

FirstPost article by Chintan Girish Modi - Originally an excerpt from Sai Paranjpye's English Autobiography titled "A Patchwork Quilt: A Collage of My Creative Life", published by HarperCollins India - In A Patchwork Quilt, renowned filmmaker Sai Paranjpye reflects on her creative practice, flaws, and failures https://www.firstpost.com/art-and-culture/in-a-patchwork-quilt-renowned-filmmaker-sai-paranjpye-reflects-on-her-creative-practice-flaws-and-failures-9087461.html - 8 December 2020 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210901095737/https://www.firstpost.com/art-and-culture/in-a-patchwork-quilt-renowned-filmmaker-sai-paranjpye-reflects-on-her-creative-practice-flaws-and-failures-9087461.html
Quotes from Sai Paranjpye

Sister , Women

“When they are asked the question by a journalist, a country, a friend, an enemy or anybody, "What is the real purpose of the taliban movement?" the answer to them all is that the taliban's mission and purpose is to implement the sharia on this land of Allah. That is their answer, true purpose and their mission from the beginning.”

Mohammed Omar (1959–2013) Founder and former leader of the Taliban

Appeal to the ulama of Afghanistan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNAR3CZhUKo, 2 April 1996

Country

“We now prefer the fantasy…We find comfort in the lies. I was the victim of that for so long. I imbibed everything. It led to a place where I became extremely unhappy. And now I question everything. I believe it’s a responsibility to do it.”

Gabriel Byrne (1950) Irish actor, film director, film producer, writer, cultural ambassador and audiobook narrator

On how people forgo truthful living for lies in “Gabriel Byrne: 'There’s a shame about men speaking out. A sense that if you were abused, it was your fault'” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/08/gabriel-byrne-its-an-obscenity-to-tell-innocent-children-theyre-going-to-hell in The Guardian (2020 Nov 8)

“Your first question must always be: what is the most difficult part of this problem that I am trying to solve and then try and solve that. If you can't solve the most difficult bit, give up! Seek advice, find somebody who can solve it!”

Joe Armstrong (1950–2019) British computer scientist

The Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science

Problem , Parting

“If somebody puts a big list of things up, my question is always: what is the most important thing on that list.”

Joe Armstrong (1950–2019) British computer scientist

The Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science

“The methodology for what I was going to do: ask some questions, get some replies, organize result, choose the best things to do.”

Joe Armstrong (1950–2019) British computer scientist

The Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science

“Physicians and scientists will measure brain hormones—in ventricular fluid and elsewhere—will link these to specific diseases, and will devise space-age techniques to restock the mind's hormonal pantries. The only question is, When?'”

Richard Bergland neuroscientist

The Fabric of Mind (1985)

Age , Disease

“My first question when it comes to spending is: "Do we need it?"”

Shay Shelnutt (1967) American politician

My second question is: "When the recession comes again, can we cut it?"
Alabama Forestry Association endorses Shay Shelnutt https://www.alreporter.com/2021/09/01/alabama-forestry-association-endorses-shay-shelnutt/ (2014)

“As a filmmaker, I really am most interested in humans and their deep desire to connect to each other. How do they get through their own lives? Where have I come and where am I now? And where do I want to go from here? It’s all of those humanistic questions.”

Lynn Shelton (1965–2020) American film director, screenwriter, film editor, actress and film producer (1965-2020)

Cinema76 - Interview with Sword of Trust Director Lynn Shelton - 16 July 2019 https://www.cinema76.com/home/2019/7/16/interview-with-sword-of-trust-director-lynn-shelton - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210727191014/https://www.cinema76.com/home/2019/7/16/interview-with-sword-of-trust-director-lynn-shelton

“If eval() is the answer, you're almost certainly asking the wrong question.”

Rasmus Lerdorf (1968) Danish programmer and creator of PHP

PHP.net: eval http://php.net/eval, Anonymous comment, 2004
PHP in a Nutshell https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/php-in-a/0596100671/re47.html by Paul Hudson, 2005

“Love is complete, but it can be decoded (broken) by asking too many questions when you are in a relationship.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Love

“Moses was such a great prophet and philosopher at the same time. He even dared to question and ask for God's real name.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God , Time

“The main question is: When will Jesus inherit the Kingdom of his father?”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Quotes about doubt page 52

Quotes about doubt
page 52