“A Question for the Sun,” p. 123
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Hopelessness”
“The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.”
Source: Design and Control of Self-organizing Systems (2007), p. 60
“You don’t get all your questions answered in this world.”
"Song of Winnie"
Winnie (1988)
Context: My Poem is life, and not finished.
It shall never be finished.
My Poem is life, and can grow.
Wherever life can grow, it will.
It will sprout out,
and do the best it can.
I give you what I have.
You don’t get all your questions answered in this world.
How many answers shall be found
in the developing world of my Poem?
I don’t know. Nevertheless I put my Poem,
which is my life, into your hands, where it will do the best it can.
Quoted in "The Azerbaijani Turks: power and identity under Russian rule" - Page 115 - by Audrey L. Altstadt - History – 1992
“It is the nature of science that answers automatically pose new and more subtle questions.”
The Wellsprings of Life (1960), p. 141
General sources
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.
“I am told, in a dream … you can only get the answer to all your questions through a dream.”
Speaking of a dream not fully remembered, in Fragments of a Journal (1966)
Context: I am told, in a dream... you can only get the answer to all your questions through a dream. So in my dream, I fall asleep, and I dream, in my dream, that I'm having that absolute, revealing dream.
“Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”
A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Exploring with Wiki
