Source: The Ringworld Engineers (1980), p. 59
“I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.”
Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)
Context: In the development of intelligence nothing can be more "basic" than learning how to ask productive questions. Many years ago, in Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Charles Weingartner and I expressed our astonishment at the neglect shown in school toward this language art.... The "back to the basics" philosophers rarely mention it, and practicing teachers usually do not find room for it in their curriculums. …all our knowledge results from questions, which is another way of saying that question-asking is our most important intellectual tool… There are at present no reading tests anywhere that measure the ability of students to address probing questions to the particular texts they are reading... What students need to know are the rules of discourse which comprise the subject, and among the most central of such rules are those which govern what is and what is not a legitimate question.
Foreword to Winning Basketball : Techniques and Drills for Playing Better Offensive Basketball (2004) by Ralph L. Pim
47 : The Question and its Answer, p. 78.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
“[R]arely is the question asked: Are… is our children learning?”
Campaign speech http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jan/14/news/mn-53988/2, Florence, South Carolina, (January 11, 2000) Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ej7ZEnjSeA&feature=related
2000s, 2000
Anatol Rapoport, "Modern Systems Theory – An Outlook for Coping with Change", paper given in the 1970 John Umstead Distinguished Lectures at North Carolina Department of Mental Health, Research Division, on 5 February 1970, and appeared in Revue Francaise de Sociologie, October 1969, p. 16
1970s and later
Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book I: The Book of Three (1964), Chapter 1
Context: "Why?" Dallben interrupted. "In some cases," he said, "we learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself."
"Paperjack" in Dreams Underfoot : The Newford Collection (2003), p. 396
Context: It's the questions we ask, the journey we take to get to where we are going that is more important than the actual answer. It's good to have mysteries. It reminds us that there's more to the world than just making do and having a bit of fun.
The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Weight Of Authority
Context: In regard, then, to the sacred tradition of humanity, we learn that it consists, not in propositions or statements which are to be accepted and believed on the authority of the tradition, but in questions rightly asked, in conceptions which enable us to ask further questions, and in methods of answering questions. The value of all these things depends on their being tested day by day. The very sacredness of the precious deposit imposes upon us the duty and the responsibility of testing it, of purifying and enlarging it to the utmost of our power. He who makes use of its results to stifle his own doubts, or to hamper the inquiry of others, is guilty of a sacrilege which centuries shall never be able to blot out. When the labours and questionings of honest and brave men shall have built up the fabric of known truth to a glory which we in this generation can neither hope for nor imagine, in that pure and holy temple he shall have no part nor lot, but his name and his works shall be cast out into the darkness of oblivion for ever.
