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Woody Allen 229
American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, p… 1935Related quotes
“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer”
“I don't have to answer. Until you know the question.”
Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead
“If you ask me a question I don't know, I'm not going to answer.”
What Time Is It? You Mean Now?: Advice for Life from the Zennest Master of Them All, Simon and Schuster, 2003, ISBN 0743244532, p. 101.
Yogiisms
1940s, Philosophy for Laymen (1946)
Context: There are a number of purely theoretical questions, of perennial and passionate interest, which science is unable to answer, at any rate at present. Do we survive death in any sense, and if so, do we survive for a time or for ever? Can mind dominate matter, or does matter completely dominate mind, or has each, perhaps, a certain limited independence? Has the universe a purpose? Or is it driven by blind necessity? Or is it a mere chaos and jumble, in which the natural laws that we think we find are only a phantasy generated by our own love of order? If there is a cosmic scheme, has life more importance in it than astronomy would lead us to suppose, or is our emphasis upon life mere parochialism and self-importance? I do not know the answer to these questions, and I do not believe that anybody else does, but I think human life would be impoverished if they were forgotten, or if definite answers were accepted without adequate evidence. To keep alive the interest in such questions, and to scrutinize suggested answers, is one of the functions of philosophy.
[It's Getting Ugly Out There: The Frauds, Bunglers, Liars, and Losers Who Are Hurting America, Wiley, 9780470144794].
2008
Also found http://books.google.com/books?id=kd41AQAAIAAJ&q=%22love+is+the+answer%22#search_anchor in "Quotations According to Woody Allen" http://books.google.com/books?id=kd41AQAAIAAJ&q=%22quotations+according%22#search_anchor from the New York Times, 1 December 1975.
His reply to a shoe manufacturer who had asked why Miller's job should be subsidized when his was not, as recounted at a London press conference. The Guardian (25 January 1990)