“But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.”
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Thomas Merton 92
Priest and author 1915–1968Related quotes
“Knowledge brings more questions than answers”
Quote in: Carlos Gershenson (2007) Design and Control of Self-organizing Systems. p. 144
However Eduardo Gianetti (2001) Lies We Live By: The Art of Self Deception p. 136 stated:
Laplace's omniscient intelligence transcends the human condition and, what's more serious, seems to get ever more and more out of reach, as the advance of scientific knowledge brings more questions than answers.
Misattributed
Variant: Knowledge brings more questions than answers
“I am more content with questions than answers.”
Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God
Context: Quantum theory is now discussing instantaneous connections between two entangled quantum objects such as electrons. This phenomenon has been observed in laboratory experiments and scientists believe they have proven it takes place. They’re not talking about faster than the speed of light. Speed has nothing to do with it. The entangled objects somehow communicate instantaneously at a distance. If that is true, distance has no meaning. Light-years have no meaning. Space has no meaning. In a sense, the entangled objects are not even communicating. They are the same thing. At the “quantum level” (and I don’t know what that means), everything may be actually or theoretically linked. All is one. Sun, moon, stars, rain, you, me, everything. All one. If this is so, then Buddhism must have been a quantum theory all along. No, I am not a Buddhist. I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am more content with questions than answers.
“The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.”
Source: Betsy in Spite of Herself
The future of data analysis. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 33 (1), (1962), page 13.
Variant: "An approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question." "as the renowned statistician John Tukey once reportedly said," according to Super Freakonomics page 224.
“It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers.”
"The Scotty Who Knew Too Much", The New Yorker (18 February 1939)
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time