Quotes about answer
page 32

“The system of administration was thoroughly remodelled. The Sullan proconsuls and propraetors had been in their provinces essentially sovereign and practically subject to no control; those of Caesar were the well-disciplined servants of a stern master, who from the very unity and life-tenure of his power sustained a more natural and more tolerable relation to the subjects than those numerous, annually changing, petty tyrants. The governorships were no doubt still distributed among the annually-retiring two consuls and sixteen praetors, but, as the Imperator directly nominated eight of the latter and the distribution of the provinces among the competitors depended solely on him, they were in reality bestowed by the Imperator. The functions also of the governors were practically restricted. His memory was matchless, and it was easy for him to carry on several occupations simultaneously with equal self-possession. Although a gentleman, a man of genius, and a monarch, he had still a heart. So long as he lived, he cherished the purest veneration for his worthy mother Aurelia… to his daughter Julia he devoted an honourable affection, which was not without reflex influence even on political affairs. With the ablest and most excellent men of his time, of high and of humbler rank, he maintained noble relations of mutual fidelity… As he himself never abandoned any of his partisans… but adhered to his friends--and that not merely from calculation--through good and bad times without wavering, several of these, such as Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Matius, gave, even after his death, noble testimonies of their attachment to him. The superintendence of the administration of justice and the administrative control of the communities remained in their hands; but their command was paralyzed by the new supreme command in Rome and its adjutants associated with the governor, and the raising of the taxes was probably even now committed in the provinces substantially to imperial officials, so that the governor was thenceforward surrounded with an auxiliary staff which was absolutely dependent on the Imperator in virtue either of the laws of the military hierarchy or of the still stricter laws of domestic discipline. While hitherto the proconsul and his quaestor had appeared as if they were members of a gang of robbers despatched to levy contributions, the magistrates of Caesar were present to protect the weak against the strong; and, instead of the previous worse than useless control of the equestrian or senatorian tribunals, they had to answer for themselves at the bar of a just and unyielding monarch. The law as to exactions, the enactments of which Caesar had already in his first consulate made more stringent, was applied by him against the chief commandants in the provinces with an inexorable severity going even beyond its letter; and the tax-officers, if indeed they ventured to indulge in an injustice, atoned for it to their master, as slaves and freedmen according to the cruel domestic law of that time were wont to atone.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, pt. 2, translated by W.P.Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Life, Death, Men, Bad luck

“President Poroshenko and his regime enjoy impunity and plan provocations like the one that occurred at the entrance to the Kerch Strait from the Black Sea. Literally a day after this blatant provocation, the text of the order…was found on one of the boats… It said that the boats should covertly, without requesting authorisation of the Russian authorities…Why?…There may only be one answer: they wanted to provoke a scandal.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

News conference following the 25th OSCE Ministerial Council, Milan, Italy (7 December 2018)

Sea

“All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action. You know that every Muslim is the brother of another Muslim. Remember, one day you will appear before Allah and answer for your deeds. So beware, do not astray from the path of righteousness after I am gone.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Final sermon

Appearance

“It is also a very curious thing. Why should a 17th-century Portuguese-Jewish philosopher whose dense and opaque writings are notoriously difficult to understand incite such passionate devotion, even obsession, among a lay audience in the 21st century? Part of the answer is the drama and mystery at the centre of his life: why exactly was Spinoza so harshly punished by the community that raised and nurtured him? Just as significant, I suspect, is that everyone loves an iconoclast – especially a radical and fearless one that suffered persecution in his lifetime for ideas and values that are still so important to us today. Spinoza is a model of intellectual courage. Like a prophet, he took on the powers-that-be with an unflinching honesty that revealed ugly truths about his fellow citizens and their society.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Steven Nadler, in his article Why Spinoza still matters https://aeon.co/essays/at-a-time-of-zealotry-spinoza-matters-more-than-ever (Aeon.co, 28 April 2016) M - R, Steven Nadler

Love, Life, Truth, Making love

“Having disburdened his heart, the Inquisitor waits for some time to hear his prisoner speak in His turn. His silence weighs upon him. He has seen that his captive has been attentively listening to him all the time, with His eyes fixed penetratingly and softly on the face of his jailer, and evidently bent upon not replying to him. The old man longs to hear His voice, to hear Him reply; better words of bitterness and scorn than His silence. Suddenly He rises; slowly and silently approaching the Inquisitor, He bends towards him and softly kisses the bloodless, four-score and-ten-year-old lips. That is all the answer…”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Grand Inquisitor

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), The Grand Inquisitor

Kiss, Silence, Time, Waiting

“Both the court and the general public give a conventional value to men and things, and then are surprised to find themselves deceived by it. This is as if arithmeticians should give a variable an arbitrary value to the figures in a sum, and then, after restoring their true and regular value in the addition, be astonished at the incorrectness of their answer.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Les gens du monde et de la Cour donnent aux hommes et aux choses une valeur conventionnelle dont ils s'étonnent de se trouver les dupes. Ils ressemblent à des calculateurs, qui, en faisant un compte, donneraient aux chiffres une valeur variable et arbitraire, et qui, ensuite, dans l'addition, leur rendant leur valeur réelle et réglée, seraient tout surpris de ne pas trouver leur compte.
Maximes et Pensées, #199
Maxims and Considerations, #199

Men

“It is the most obvious fact that Jerzy Vetulani is an extraordinary personality who masterfully combines deep knowledge with the art of rhetoric, form and beauty of expression. But I have trouble answering the question: Who is Professor Vetulani really? There is no doubt that he is an eminent scholar, a star of Polish science, but he is also an unconventional man – what shocked me two years ago when he marched in the first line of the Cannabis Legalization March.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

Jacek Purchla, art historian, director of the International Cultural Centre in Kraków and the President of the Polish National Commission for UNESCO. An introduction to Vetulani's lecture during the GAP Symposium in Szczyrk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtGOlcQaIdM (in Polish), January 2016.

Beauty, Art, Star, Question

“Whether the stars were all at the same distance, or whether they were scattered throughout infinite space, or whether they formed a finite system of vast but limited depth, were questions that could not be answered until towards the end of the eighteenth century.”

Gerald James Whitrow (1912–2000) British mathematician

Until then, stellar astronomy was a field left to the unaided imagination.
The Structure of the Universe: An Introduction to Cosmology (1949)

Star, Question

“Bobby Seale is going through all types of physical and mental torture. But that’s alright, because we said even before this happened, and we’re going to say it after this and after I’m locked up and after everybody’s locked up, that you can jail revolutionaries, but you can’t jail the revolution. You might run a liberator like Eldridge Cleaver out of the country, but you can’t run liberation out of the country. You might murder a freedom fighter like Bobby Hutton, but you can’t murder freedom fighting, and if you do, you’ll come up with answers that don’t answer, explanations that don’t explain, you’ll come up with conclusions that don’t conclude, and you’ll come up with people that you thought should be acting like pigs that’s acting like people and moving on pigs. And that’s what we’ve got to do. So we’re going to see about Bobby regardless of what these people think we should do, because school is not important and work is not important. Nothing’s more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.”

Fred Hampton (1948–1969) African-American activist

Excerpt from Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/12/4/watch_the_assassination_of_fred_hampton.

People, School, Thinking, Freedom

“That man is Norodom Ranariddh and my name is Ung Huot. To answer your question, different personality, different name. I should not worry too much about Prince Ranariddh. Better to leave this and talk about me. You know Prince Ranariddh; and now you should know me. I was the one who tried to tell him to work together with Hun Sen. But he did not listen to me. I work with Hun Sen and there is peace and stability.”

Norodom Ranariddh (1944) Cambodian politician

by Ung Huot, Ranariddh's successor as First Prime Minister of Cambodia in August 1997
[Conflict and Change in Cambodia, Kiernan, Ben and Hughes, Caroline, 2007, Routledge, 9780415385923], p. 36.

Peace, Question, Personality

“We conversed for about 20 minutes, where most of it were repetitions of questions that I had answered, where he just could not comprehend what my answer was. For example, he asked why I still came for the prom when I was so negative and unappreciative of the school, I answered that I wasn’t celebrating how great the school was, but the things I have learnt from it, being in this environment which was very hostile to me. He didn’t quite comprehend it so he asked the question another 3 or 4 times.”

Amos Yee (1998) blogger

Tumblr postings

Hostility, School, Question, Time

“Cognition is autonomous; it refuses to have any answers foisted on it from the outside. Yet it suffers without protest having certain questions prescribed to it from the outside (and it is here that my heresy regarding the unwritten law of the university originates). Not every question seems to me worth asking. Scientific curiosity and omnivorous aesthetic appetite mean equally little to me today, though I was once under the spell of both, particularly the latter. Now I only inquire when I find myself inquired of.”

Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) Jewish theologian and philosopher

Inquired of, that is, by men rather than by scholars. There is a man in each scholar, a man who inquires and stands in need of answers. I am anxious to answer the scholar qua man but not the representative of a certain discipline, that insatiable, ever inquisitive phantom which like a vampire drains whom it possesses of his humanity.
in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (1961/1998), p. 97

Law, Question, Suffering, Universe

“For twelve months now, since I first began the practice of law, since I became an attorney, a man who speak for others, a counselor at law who has the power to address the court, that’s right, a big man, a mature person who helps others in distress—for approximately 365 days time has been nothing but a never-ending experience that meets me in the morning just like it left me off the night before. No longer am I the clear-headed mathematician of my college years. I used to have the answers; and if I didn’t, I could always turn to the back of the book or ask Professor Blackburn at Wednesday morning’s advanced algebra class. For a year now, my only conscious concern has been the pain in my stomach, the arguments of Dr. Serbin, and the schedules of the television shows. I know them all by heart. I can quote every single fucking show on Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, and, you won’t believe it, even on the educational station, Channel 9. I am the world’s only living T. V. Guide, that’s really what I am. And they want me to counsel them!”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 24.

Pain, Books, World, Education

“Equality gives rise to challenging questions which are not altogether easy to answer… a = a and a = b are obviously statements of differing cognitive value; a = a holds a priori and, according to Kant, is to be labeled analytic, while statements of the form a = b often contain very valuable extensions of our knowledge and cannot always be established a priori.”

Gottlob Frege Sense and reference

The discovery that the rising sun is not new every morning, but always the same, was one of the most fertile astronomical discoveries. Even to-day the identification of a small planet or a comet is not always a matter of course. Now if we were to regard equality as a relation between that which the names 'a' and 'b' designate, it would seem that a = b could not differ from a = a (i.e. provided a = b is true). A relation would thereby be expressed of a thing to itself, and indeed one in which each thing stands to itself but to no other thing.
As cited in: M. Fitting, Richard L. Mendelsoh (1999), First-Order Modal Logic, p. 142. They called this Frege's Puzzle.
Über Sinn und Bedeutung, 1892

Question, Knowledge

“I cannot think of a single answer that I made in the years that I argued before the Court while Justice White sat on it that seemed to satisfy him. While I won a number of cases that I argued before him, and he voted for my side in most of them, I never had the sense that anything I said pleased him. White, a former All-American running back (whose much-repeated college nickname, Whizzer, was one that appalled him), was no fan of press claims for broad First Amendment protection. He invariably asked questions that were both pointed and powerful.”

Byron White (1917–2002) Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, American football player

Floyd Abrams, Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment, (Viking Press, 2005), p. 71.

Justice, Question, Thinking, Sense

“There are moments of clarity daily. They open me up with a breath and keep me calm. They feed me the answers. And they hold me lovingly. They are gospelstiches. My childish ass has got to let them heal. This feud I’m having with myself isn’t even original. But it is thick and rooted. Here’s to today, slowing down, suspending judgment, and breast strokes through chaos.”

Buddy Wakefield (1974) American poet

"Growing up Slowly"
Poetry

“Field Marshal Model was a peerless master of the large-scale defensive battle. Always present himself at critical points, he asked a great deal of his troops. Often he was harsh, sometimes ruthless. But he always found the answer to the trickiest of situations, never leaving his men in the lurch.”

Walter Model (1891–1945) German field marshal

"Battle for White Russia: the destruction of Army Group Centre, June 1944" - Page 257 - by Gerd Niepold - 1987

Men

“And the answer, said the judge. If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Love, Men, God, People

“You want the short version. Okay, then: shit happens. Does that answer all your question? Thought not. Now, if you shut your face and let me tell this my way, we might actually get somewhere. Thank you.”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

the spokesclone, p. 319
Falling Sideways (2002)

Way, Question

“A sign in the yard of a church next door said CHRIST IS THE ANSWER.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

The question, of course, is: What do you say when you strike your thumb with a hammer?
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

Christ

“I am a believer in liberty. That is my religion — to give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right — because it is his right — but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I may urge — in other words, he must have absolute freedom of speech.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Religion, Freedom

“Religion, it stops people from thinking because they think all the answers are in that one book; it impedes progress; it justifies crazy people.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative.
I'm Swiss (2005)

People, Books, Religion, Thinking

“From that time that it was shewed I desired oftentimes to learn what was our Lord’s meaning. And fifteen years after, and more, I was answered in ghostly understanding, saying thus: Wouldst thou learn thy Lord’s meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord’s meaning.
The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 86

Love, Making love, Understanding, Learning

“Why do the characters in Jane Austen give us a slightly new pleasure each time they come in, as opposed to the merely repetitive pleasure that is caused by a character in Dickens? Why do they combine so well in a conversation, and draw one another out, without seeming to do so, and never perform? The answer to this question can be put in several ways; that, unlike Dickens, she was a real artist, that she never stooped to caricature, etc. But the best reply is that her characters, though smaller than his, are more highly organized. They function all round, and even if her plot made greater demands on them than it does, they would still be adequate.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

E.M. Forster, Aspects of The Novel (1927)

Pleasure, Way, Question, Time

“Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion. Whether you think it deeply unjust, lamentable but inevitable, or obvious and unproblematic, this is hardly news. It is true in most societies and has been true in the United States for at least as long as we have thought to ask the question and had sufficient data to verify the answer.”

Sean Reardon American sociologist

No Rich Child Left Behind, 2013

Children, School, Family, Question

“All types of conniving methods are still being used to keep Negroes from becoming registered voters. Complex literacy tests are often given, with questions that a Ph. D. in any field or a person with a law degree from any great law university in the world could not answer to the even more difficult question of, how many bubbles do you find on a bar of soap? They tell me that occasionally they will ask that question in Mississippi and Alabama. And there are still millions of Negroes who are not registered to vote because of these methods being used.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

World, Law, Question, Universe

“Among the most momentous questions that every thinking person asks are: Where do we come from? Who are we? And where do we go at death?...It is questions like these that occur to the thinking mind when it also reflects upon the nature, origin, and destiny of the worlds which bestrew the spaces of infinitude. Whence came they? What are they? What is their destiny? They are questions which must have answers. The mere fact that these things are, shows that there are answers to be had somewhere.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: Man in Evolution (1941), Chapter 1

Death, World, Question, Nature

“The strength of the doctrine of reincarnation lies in itself, in its appeal to our intellectual and logical faculties, in its own persuasiveness, in the manner in which it answers problems, in the hope that it gives, in the light that it sheds upon collateral questions of human life, and indirectly upon the problems of the physical world surrounding us. It is through and by reincarnation as a natural fact, that we learn the beauty of the inner life and thereby grow, developing a larger comprehension, not only of ourselves, but of the loveliness inherent in the harmony of the universal laws. For there is back of all things beauty, and bliss, and truth.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: Man in Evolution (1941), Chapter 10

Life, Truth, World, Law

“Don't expect any answers, dear,
For I know that they don't come with age, no, no.
Well, ain't never gonna love you any better, babe.
And I'm never gonna love you right,
So you'd better take it now, and right now.”

Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American singer and songwriter

"Kozmic Blues", co-written with Gabriel Mekler
I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! (1969)

Love, Age, Making love

“To truly listen for intuition means to listen with all of your senses. You may hear the answer, or see the answer. You may just "know" the answer. You may get a physical sensation such as a chill or hot flash or feel the answer emotionally.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Feeling, Sense

“Don’t ever be lazy enough, defeatist enough, cowardly enough to say “I don't understand it so it must be a miracle - it must be supernatural - God did it”. Say instead, that it’s a puzzle, it’s strange, it’s a challenge that we should rise to. Whether we rise to the challenge by questioning the truth of the observation, or by expanding our science in new and exciting directions - the proper and brave response to any such challenge is to tackle it head-on. And until we've found a proper answer to the mystery, it's perfectly ok simply to say “this is something we don't yet understand - but we're working on it.””

Richard Dawkins book The Magic of Reality

It's the only honest thing to do. Miracles, magic and myths, they can be fun. Everybody likes a good story. Myths are fun, as long as you don't confuse them with the truth. The real truth has a magic of its own. The truth is more magical, in the best and most exciting sense of the word, than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic - the magic of reality. Duke University, 01/03/2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYcOoqxuroI&t=54m51s The Magic Of Reality (2012)

God, Truth, Understanding, Question

“My theory of technique, if I have one, is very far from original; nor is it complicated. I can express it in fifteen words, by quoting The Eternal Question And Immortal Answer of burlesk, viz. "Would you hit a woman with a child?”

E.E. Cummings book EIMI

No, I'd hit her with a brick." Like the burlesk comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.
EIMI (1933)

Quotes, Question

“There are two separate answers…For people in general, I think they should name themselves in whatever way they wish. The flourishing of the gay movement in America is clearly very necessary and the identity that people could proudly lay claim to is crucial. Lives are lost every day because of bigotry in this country. So I think that should not prevail.”

Saffron Burrows (1972) English actress, model and writer

On labelling and sexual orientation in “Saffron Burrows: ‘I’m really proud of my family and who they are’” https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/dec/01/saffron-burrows-married-to-alison-balian-mozart-in-the-jungle in The Guardian (2014 Dec 01)

People, Way, Thinking, Country

“Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves. We apprehend truth from our own source within the historical tradition.
The content of our truth depends upon our appropriating the historical foundation. Our own power of generation lies in the rebirth of what has been handed down to us. If we do not wish to slip back, nothing must be forgotten; but if philosophising is to be genuine our thoughts must arise from our own source. Hence all appropriation of tradition proceeds from the intentness of our own life. The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

On My Philosopy (1941)

Life, Truth, Feeling, Question

“I can only answer that I tried to tell the truth and, if not be objective, at least be fair; history is not served when reporters prize trepidation and propriety over the robust journalistic duty to tell the whole story.”

Randy Shilts (1951–1994) American journalist

The Life and Times of Harvey Milk Randy Shilts, Chronicler of AIDS Epidemic, Dies at 42; Journalism: Author of 'And the Band Played On' is credited with awakening nation to the health crisis http://articles.latimes.com/1994-02-18/news/mn-24467_1_randy-shilts Quote

Truth, History

“You can tell you’ve found a really interesting question when nobody wants you to answer it.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 8 (p. 92)

Question

“To an atheist […], there is no all-seeing all-loving god to keep us free from harm. But atheism is not a recipe for despair. I think the opposite. By disclaiming the idea of the next life, we can take more excitement in this one. The here and now is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The here and now is all we have, an inspiration to make the most of it. So atheism is life-affirming, in a way religion can never be. Look around you. Nature demands our attention, begs us to explore, to question. Religion can provide only facile, ultimately unsatisfying answers. Science, in constantly seeking real explanations, reveals the true majesty of our world in all its complexity. People sometimes say "There must be more than just this world, than just this life."”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

But how much more do you want? We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they’re never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here, the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privileged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world. End of the part 2: "The Virus of Faith" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMUG6qd98wc The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

Love, Life, God, People

“Art is an act of the soul, not of the intellect. When we are dealing with people's dreams — their visions, really — we are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We invoke the Great Creator when we invoke our own creativity, and that creative force has the power to alter lives, fulfill destinies, and answer our dreams.”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

Inspirations : Meditations from The Artist's Way (2001), "Invocation"

People, Dreams, Art, Soul

“While others make obtuse remarks about the state of our roads and some turn into anthropological visitors who come to ogle the condition of our people, we cannot stand by as a society and do nothing. We have an obligation to answer this difficult question of poverty and also do something about it. First, we need to understand poverty in a very basic way and how it is impacting our society.”

Samuel Sejjaaka (1964) Ugandan businessman

When our potholes, poverty become tourist attractions https://www.monitor.co.ug/OpEd/Commentary/-potholes-poverty-tourist-attractions-politicians/689364-5472846-14ittep/index.html (February 29, 2020), Daily Monitor.

People, Making love, Way, Understanding

“Undoubtedly, even for enlightened men, however determined they may be, it is very difficult to go against the system. The question posed today is what must we do to prevent ourselves from being taken over by the system? Engaging in political or economic conflict does not seem to be the answer.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Zen Keys (1994), p. 150

Men, Question

“If I could deliver one message to the researchers who are looking for the cause of diabetes, and the cause of clogged arteries, and the cause of high blood pressure, and the cause of obesity, I would tell them the answer is in three words. It's the food!”

Michael Klaper (1947) American physician

Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).

Food

“This age proclaims the sovereignty of the citizen, and the inviolability of life; it crowns the people, and consecrates man. In art, it possesses all varieties of genius,—writers, orators, poets, historians, publicists, philosophers, painters, sculptors, musicians; majesty, grace, power, force, splendour, colour, form, style; it renews its strength in the real and in the ideal, and bears in its hand the two thunderbolts, the true and the beautiful. In science it accomplishes unheard-of miracles; it makes of cotton salt petre, of steam a horse, of the voltaic battery a workman, of the electric fluid a messenger, of the sun a painter; it waters itself with subterranean streams, pending the time when it shall warm itself with the central fire; it opens upon the two infinites those two windows, the telescope upon the infinitely great, the microscope upon the infinitely little, and it finds stars in the first abyss, and insects in the second, which prove to it the existence of God... It annihilates time, it annihilates space, it annihilates suffering; it writes a letter from Paris to London, and has an answer in ten minutes; it cuts off a man's leg, the man sings and smiles.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Conclusion, Part Second, II
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Life, God, People, Age

“I stood asking news of the ruins concerning their lovely habitants;
but what avail my questions to dreary rocks, who answer them only by their echo?”

Labīd (560–661) Sahabah and poet

Translated by C. J. Lyall, quoted in Arabian Poetry, p. 42 https://archive.org/details/arabianpoetryfo00clougoog/page/n127/mode/2up Couplets

Love, Making love, Question

“DESOLATE are the mansions of the fair, the stations in Minia, where they rested, and those where they fixed their abodes! Wild are the hills of Goul, and deserted is the summit of Rijaam.
The canals of Rayaan are destroyed: the remains of them are laid bare and smoothed by the floods, like characters engraved on the solid rocks.
Dear ruins! Many a year has been closed, many a month, holy and unhallowed, has elapsed, since I exchanged tender vows with their fair inhabitants!
The rainy constellations of spring have made their hills green and luxuriant: the drops from the thunder-clouds have drenched them with profuse as well as with gentle showers:
Showers, from every nightly cloud, from every cloud veiling the horizon at day-break, and from every evening cloud, responsive with hoarse murmurs.
Here the wild eringo-plants raise their tops: here the antelopes bring forth their young, by the sides of the valley: and here the ostriches drop their eggs.
The large-eyed wild-cows lie suckling their young, a few days old—their young, who will soon become a herd on the plain.
The torrents have cleared the rubbish, and disclosed the traces of habitations, as the reeds of a writer restore effaced letters in a book;
Or as the black dust, sprinkled over the varied marks on a fair hand, brings to view with a brighter tint the blue stains of woad.
I stood asking news of the ruins concerning their lovely habitants; but what avail my questions to dreary rocks, who answer them only by their echo?”

Labīd (560–661) Sahabah and poet

Translated by C. J. Lyall, quoted in Arabian Poetry, p. 41-42. First Stanza, lines 1-10 https://archive.org/details/arabianpoetryfo00clougoog/page/n127/mode/2up The Poem of Labīd (translated by C. J. Lyall in 1881)

Love, Lie, Books, Making love

“I am interested in how we interrogate architecture in terms of its social functions and meanings. Architectural historians writing on eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain have tended to see social history as the answer to this question. But the social history of architecture or the histories of specific social groups which operated in and around the architecture or building(s), or indeed the spaces created by them or for them, provide only a backdrop or loose historical context.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 4 : A class performance : Social histories of architecture

History, Question

“Undocumented aliens unfortunately are not protected by the law and they are tremendously subjected to exploitation. The result is that they would be willing to work for a wage that no person who is welcome in our shores would, would take. I think the answer to that problem is in Congress' lap. People who have been hardworking, tax paying, those people ought to be given an opportunity to be on a track that leads towards citizenship and if that happened, then they wouldn't be prey to the employers who say "we want you because we know that you work for a salary we could not lawfully pay anyone else."”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

"Interview with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg", The Takeaway (16 September 2013) https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-09-16/transcript-interview-supreme-court-justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg 2010s

People, Law, Problem, Thinking

“What is the question, to which this is the answer?”

Nancy Kopell (1942) American mathematician

In an interview on DSweb. https://dsweb.siam.org/The-Magazine/Article/interview-with-nancy-kopell Also quoted by Alexandros Gelastopoulos in Synchronization properties and functional implications of parietal beta1 rhythm. https://open.bu.edu/handle/2144/38796 Doctoral dissertation, Boston University (2019). Preface.

Question

“How do we form ourselves into an activity—a force to improve the situation? I don't have the answers. I'm an academic—[we're] the most useless people in the world.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

FemiFest radical feminist conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7b59mFyREY&t=9m25s, London (31 August 2014)

People, World

“The threat of pandemic flu is the number one health security concern, are we ready to respond? I fear the answer is no.”

Luciana Borio American physician and public health administrator

At a symposium at Emory University in Atlanta in 2018, marking the 100th anniversary of 1918 flu pandemic. As quoted in Contrary to Trump’s Claim, A Pandemic Was Widely Expected at Some Point https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/contrary-to-trumps-claim-a-pandemic-was-widely-expected-at-some-point/ (March 20, 2020) by Rem Rieder, FactCheck.org.

Health, Fear

“If my years as a shatterling had taught me anything, it was that not all questions had answers. Societies had reduced themselves to radioactive dust because they could not accept that single unpalatable truth.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 8 (pp. 84-85)

Truth, Question

“College students are not happy with answers from professors. Students are challenging them. A tension is growing. Students are chained to student debt they cannot possibly pay back…. This system no longer works for them, and they know it.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

Global Capitalism Monthly Update (12 March 2014)

Happiness

“Once they had occupied academic bodies, once they had captured universities and thereby determined what will be taught, which books will be prescribed, what questions would be asked, what answers will be acceptable, these historians came to decide what history had actually been! As it suits their current convenience and politics to make out that Hinduism also has been intolerant, they will glide over what Ambedkar says about the catastrophic effect that Islamic invasions had on Buddhism, they will completely suppress what he said of the nature of these invasions and of Muslim rule in his Thoughts on Pakistan,3 but insist on reproducing his denunciations of ‘Brahmanism’, and his view that the Buddhist India established by the Mauryas was systematically invaded and finished by Brahmin rulers.
Thus, they suppress facts, they concoct others, they suppress what an author has said on one matter even as they insist that what he has said on another be taken as gospel truth. And when anyone attempts to point out what had in fact happened, they rise in chorus: a conspiracy to rewrite history, they shout, a plot to distort history, they scream. But they are the ones who have been distorting it in the first place – by suppressing the truth, by planting falsehoods.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

Truth, Books, Making love, History

“I had a teacher who used to reflect back my questions that way. I thought it was the Socratic method, and it impressed me immensely, until I found out he used it whenever he didn’t know the answer.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 4 (p. 60)

Way, Question, Teachers

“We have become blind to the alternatives to violence. This involves us in a sort of official madness, in which, while following what seems to be a perfect logic of self-defense and deterrence, we commit one absurdity after another: We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to "win the hearts and minds of the people" by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the "truth" of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations. … I have come to the realization that I can no longer imagine a war that I would believe to be either useful or necessary. I would be against any war.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"A Statement Against the War in Vietnam" an address at the University of Kentucky (10 February 1968) http://books.google.com/books?id=-hHNuLumg8wC&pg=PA68 The Long-Legged House (1969)

War, People, Truth, Peace

“Creativity is a constant process of call and response taking place inside our heads. If all is going well, the question–answer routine is like the two sides of our brain working together as if in an inner-cranial pas de deux.”

Will Gompertz (1965) British journalist

Think Like an Artist (2015)

Question

“It is surprising how long it takes to do a simple addition when your life depends on the answer.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Breaking Strain

Breaking Strain, p. 172
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Life, Dependency

“If the brutes have consciousness and no souls, then it is clear that, in them, consciousness is a direct function of material changes; while, if they possess immaterial subjects of consciousness, or souls, then, as consciousness is brought into existence only as the consequence of molecular motion of the brain, it follows that it is an indirect product of material changes. The soul stands related to the body as the bell of a clock to the works, and consciousness answers to the sound which the bell gives out when it is struck.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Soul, Relation ships, Change

“I feel that we are on the eve of a new era, when there is to be great harmony between the Federal and Confederate. I cannot stay to be a living witness to the correctness of this prophecy; but I feel it within me that it is to be so. The universally kind feeling expressed for me at a time when it was supposed that each day would prove my last, seemed to me the beginning of the answer to "Let us have peace."”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

The expression of these kindly feelings were not restricted to a section of the country, nor to a division of the people. They came from individual citizens of all nationalities; from all denominations — the Protestant, the Catholic, and the Jew; and from the various societies of the land — scientific, educational, religious or otherwise. Politics did not enter into the matter at all.
I am not egotist enough to suppose all this significance should be given because I was the object of it. But the war between the States was a very bloody and a very costly war. One side or the other had to yield principles they deemed dearer than life before it could be brought to an end. I commanded the whole of the mighty host engaged on the victorious side. I was, no matter whether deservedly so or not, a representative of that side of the controversy. It is a significant and gratifying fact that Confederates should have joined heartily in this spontaneous move. I hope the good feeling inaugurated may continue to the end.

Conclusion
1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

Peace, Feeling, Universe, Time

“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

Love, People, Truth, Making love

“We are the beat of nature's heart,
the earth is our heaven
and the sun our breath,
through our heart journey's
the eternity unfolds and encircles us
with her gentle hands,
there is no end or return, no answer,
just one spark flickers.”

alexis karpouzos

poetry and spirituality

Nature, Sun, Heart

“Science can only answer to the great majority of "metaphysical" problems "I am ignorant."”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Meanwhile, it is idle to be impatient or to indulge in system-making.

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Problem, Science

“Impossible questions require impossible answers.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Alexander, sec. 54
Parallel Lives

Question

“The type of people who gravitate to the government system are doing this out of desperation and they don't really have the answers, and eventually... [will] fail.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

2019

People

“Seriously though, some of the feminist advice given to women is borderline psychopathic. You know, like, “Never take ‘no’ for an answer! Always take what you want!””

Natalie Wynn ContraPoints

This is like rapist advice. ContraPoints, Feminism Did Not Destroy Atheism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klfH9QaEcqY (2016), Pop Feminism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3glomsCM5mU (2016)

Women

“Everybody's just waiting to hear from the one
Who can give them the answers
And lead them back to that place in the warmth of the sun
Where sweet childhood still dances
Who'll come along
And hold out that strong
But gentle fathers hand?”

Jackson Browne (1948) American singer-songwriter

Source: For Everyman, from For Everyman (1973)

Strong, Waiting, Sun, Dance

“Why shouldn’t I eat toothpaste? It’s a free world. Why shouldn’t I chew my toenails? i happen to have trodden in some honey. Why shouldn’t I prance across central park with delicate sideways leaps? I know what your answer will be: “it isn’t done.””

Derek Parfit book Reasons and Persons

But it’s no earthly use just saying it isn’t done. If there’s a reason why it isn’t done, give the reason—if there’s no reason, don’t attempt to stop me doing it. All other things being equal, the mere fact that something “isn’t done” is in itself an excellent reason for doing it.

p.101
Reasons and Persons (1984)

World

“In physics we have outgrown archer and apple-pie definitions of the fundamental symbols. To a request to explain what an electron really is supposed to be we can only answer, "It is part of the A B C of physics."”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

The external world of physics has thus become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. Later perhaps we may inquire whether in our zeal to cut out all that is unreal we may not have used the knife too ruthlessly. Perhaps, indeed, reality is a child which cannot survive without its nurse illusion. But if so, that is of little concern to the scientist, who has good and sufficient reasons for pursuing his investigations in the world of shadows and is content to leave to the philosopher the determination of its exact status in regard to reality. In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. Then comes the alchemist Mind who transmutes the symbols. The sparsely spread nuclei of electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow. Nor does the alchemy stop here. In the transmuted world new significances arise which are scarcely to be traced in the world of symbols; so that it becomes a world of beauty and purpose — and, alas, suffering and evil.
The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.

Introduction
The Nature of the Physical World (1928)

Parting

“Being gay isn't a choice, just like being black isn't a choice…I don't stop. I do not give up. I do not take America's 'no' to my identity for an answer.”

Saeed Jones (1985) American poet

On being Black and gay in the United States in “'We're All Struggling': Writer Saeed Jones Reflects On Identity And Acceptance” https://www.npr.org/2019/11/06/776747102/we-re-all-struggling-writer-saeed-jones-reflects-on-identity-and-acceptance in NPR (2019 Nov 6)

“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, Question

“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

Life, Question, Sense, Appearance

“Why are there so many kinds of animals? Adaptive radiations like Darwin’s finches are the essence of the answer.”

Jonathan Weiner (1953) American nonfiction writer

Source: The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (1994), Chapter 14, New Beings (p. 207)

Animals

“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

Question, 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, Question

“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)

Life, God, Understanding, Question

“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

Life, Education, Beauty, Question

“As both sides debate the path forward on reforming our immigration system, the BE SAFE Act provides a constitutional answer that guarantees funding for our needs on the border without taking away from other priorities or increasing the burden on American taxpayers.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

4 March 2019 https://votesmart.org/public-statement/1331191/dr-rand-paul-introduces-be-safe-act-to-fund-border-security 2019

“That I shall sink in death, I know must be;
But with that death of mine what life will die? Across the air, I hear my heart's voice cry:
Where dost thou bear me reckless one? Descend!
Such rashness seldom ends but bitterly'
"Fear not the lofty fall" I answer "rend
With might the clouds, and be content to die,
If God such a glorious death for us intend."”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

As quoted in "Giordano Bruno" by Thomas Davidson, in The Index Vol. VI. No. 36 (4 March 1886), p. 429

Life, Death, God, Fear

“To be and not to be, that is the answer.”

Piet Hein (1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet

This witticism derived from William Shakespeare's line "To be or not to be; that is the question" in Hamlet, has sometimes been attributed to Hein, but also to many others. The earliest occurrence so far located in research for Wikiquote was published in A Calendar of Doubts and Faiths (1930) by William Marias Malisoff.
Misattributed

Motivational, Wise, For women, Deep

“If we are only organizing for elections, we are not going to win the world that we need...No one politician is the answer. No one president is the answer. You are the answer, mass movements are the answer.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

via tweet https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324895073776054273 on November 6, 2020 Twitter Quotes (2020), November 2020

World

“For the man crucified on the crossed machine guns
Without name, without resurrection, without stars,
His dark head heavy with death and his flesh long sour
With the smell of his many prisons — John Smith, John Doe,
John Nobody — oh, crack your mind for his name!
Faceless as water, naked as the dust,
Dishonored as the earth the gas-shells poison
And barbarous with portent.
This is he.
This is the man they ate at the green table
Putting their gloves on ere they touched the meat.
This is the fruit of war, the fruit of peace,
The ripeness of invention, the new lamb,
The answer to the wisdom of the wise.
And still he hangs, and still he will not die
And still, on the steel city of our years
The light falls and the terrible blood streams down.”

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

Source: Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

Death, Wisdom, War, Peace

“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)

Life, Making love, Hope, Idea

“When men tell us that the great religious teachers are neuropaths, that Buddha, Christ, S. Francis, are neuropaths, then we are inclined to cast our lot with the abnormal few, rather than with the normal many. We know what they were. They were men who saw far more and knew far more than we; what matters it whether we call their brains normal or abnormal? In these men's consciousness is a ray of the Divine splendour; as Browning says: Through such souls alone God, stooping, shows sufficient of Hill Light For us in the dark to rise by. And if in those cases the brain change from a normal to an abnormal state, then humanity must ever remain thankful to abnormality. That was the first answer which may be made to this statement of Lombroso, and you find a man like Dr. Maudsley, the famous doctor, asking whether there is any law that nature shall use only for her purposes what we call the perfect brains? May it not be that for her higher performances she needs brains which are different from the ordinary, the normal brains of man?”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Essays and Addresses, Vol. III- Evolution and Occultism (1913)

Men, God, Law, Soul

“Look—I understand that many of my fellow Americans view the future with fear and trepidation. I understand they worry about their jobs. I understand like my dad, they lay in bed wondering, can I keep my health care, can I pay my mortgage. Thinking about their families, about what comes next. I promise you, I get it.But the answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don′t look like you or worship the way you do or don′t get their news from the same source as you do. We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.If we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we are willing to stand in the other person′s shoes—as my mom would say—just for a moment, stand in their shoes. Because here′s the thing about life: there′s no accounting for what fate will deal you.”

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

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Life, Fate, War, Health

“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, Question, Time, Reading

“[T]ogether we shall write an American story of hope, not fear. Of unity, not division. Of light, not darkness. A story of decency and dignity, love and healing, greatness and goodness.May this be the story that guides us, the story that inspires us, and the story that tells ages yet to come that we answered the call of history, we met the moment. Democracy and hope, truth and justice, did not die on our watch, but thrived, that America secured liberty at home and stood once again as a beacon to the world. That is what we owe our forebears, one another, and generations to follow.So, with purpose and resolve, we turn to those tasked of our time, sustained by faith, driven by conviction, and devoted to one another and the country we love with all our hearts. May God bless America and may God protect our troops. Thank you, America.”

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

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Love, God, Truth, Age

“The disciples... asked the Master why it had been written that Elijah should appear first, and received a remarkable reply. St. Matthew records the incident thus: And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, that Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Matt. 17:10–13
Reincarnation & Christianity (1967)

Suffering, Appearance

“It should also be remembered that the Bible is written in the language of symbols, a special category of literature designed both to conceal and to reveal spiritual truths. Blindness is a symbol for temporary unawareness of spiritual light. The Christ partly represents spiritual intuitiveness. When one who is spiritually blind becomes intuitively awakened and active or, symbolically, enters the presence of the Christ and is healed by him, the scales are said to have fallen from his eyes. This I believe to be the true symbolical interpretation; for I look upon the story as one of the many beautiful miniature mystery dramas to be found in the Bible, portraying in allegory and symbol the soul’s awakening from darkness to light. Nevertheless, symbolism apart, the answer given by the Lord was, as stated above, doctrinally and technically correct.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Reincarnation & Christianity (1967)

Truth, Beauty, Soul, Literature

“I generally answered to myself, that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

Thinking

“It is known that Whistler when asked how long it took him to paint one of his "nocturnes" answered: "All of my life."”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

With the same rigor he could have said that all of the centuries that preceded the moment when he painted were necessary. From that correct application of the law of causality it follows that the slightest event presupposes the inconceivable universe and, conversely, that the universe needs even the slightest of events.
"Gauchesque Poetry"
Discussion (1932)

Life, Painting

“I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask "Why are we here?"”

Richard Feynman book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me. Source: No Ordinary Genius (1994), p. 239, from interview in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981): video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=48m10s

Thinking

“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)

World, Mathematics, Question, Nature

“Silence is the best answer for those who do not want to understand.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Il silenzio è la miglior risposta a chi non vuol capire.
Source: prevale.net

Understanding, Silence

“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

Question

“What! all of us, Christians, not only profess to love one another, but do actually live one common life; we whose social existence beats with one common pulse—we aid one another, learn from one another, draw ever closer to one another to our mutual happiness, and find in this closeness the whole meaning of life!—and to-morrow some crazy ruler will say some stupidity, and another will answer in the same spirit, and then I must go expose myself to being murdered, and murder men—who have done me no harm—and more than that, whom I love. And this is not a remote contingency, but the very thing we are all preparing for, which is not only probable, but an inevitable certainty.”

Leo Tolstoy The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Source: The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Chapter V, Contradiction Between our Life and our Christian Conscience

Love, Life, Men, Happiness

“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

Question, Falseness

“Goodness, generosity and gentleness have been expressed in neighbourliness, voluntarism and the huge sacrifices made by individuals and families. Our faith will not provide easy answers, yet faith will help to provide perspective which will enable us to address the challenges.”

Michael Neary (bishop) (1946) Irish bishop

Ireland: Archbishop Michael Neary`s homily for Reek Sunday https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/40106 (July 26, 2020)

Family, Faith, Help

“As a film composer it's not your symphony. You know, that's one of the things you have to get over right away; that you are, as you say, a hired gun. You know, you can inject a lot of yourself into it, but the bottom-line is that you are working for other people. The ideal situation is where you make you happy and you make them happy, and that's usually what happens. But, yeah, ultimately you are answering to someone else and the sooner you figure that out, the longer you'll be around.”

Jeff Danna (1964) film composer

Jeff Danna Interview https://www.ign.com/articles/2004/08/28/jeff-danna-interview (27 August 2004)

Happiness, People, Making love

“Then it is impossible to get an honest answer from you.”

Roger Zelazny book Jack of Shadows

“If by ‘honest answer’ you mean for me to say what you want me to say, whether or not it is true, then I would say that you are correct.”
Source: Jack of Shadows (1971), Chapter 1 (p. 11)

“Happiness is the indication that man has found the answer to the problem of human existence: the productive realization of his potentialities and thus, simultaneously, being one with the world and preserving the integrity of his self. In spending his energy productively he increases his powers, he "burns without being consumed.“”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Source: Man for Himself (1947), p.189

Happiness, World, Problem, Self-confidence

“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)

Life, Question, Science

Quotes about answer page 32

Quotes about answer
page 32