Questioning Quotes

“Female monsters take things as personally as they really are. They study facts. Even if rejection makes them feel like the girl who's not invited to the party, they have to understand the reasons why.
... Every question, once it's formulated, is a paradigm, contains its own internal truth. We have to stop diverting ourselves with false questions. And I told Warren: I aim to be a female monster too.”
― Chris Kraus, I Love Dick

“One can only return to the fact that even the most ordinary, good-hearted, intelligent people are literally prone to believing the most blatantly nonsensical untruths. And this comes from the realization that there are some opinions and some beliefs so incredibly inane, we may actually on occasion feel insane for not believing them; and that is probably because in giving the benefit of the doubt we self-doubt, we convince ourselves into lame passivity and blind acceptance, we tell ourselves, 'Maybe I'm just missing something here.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“When someone asks a question, don't assume they don't know the answer. Clever people will always test you.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“If your organization is not formally committed to a policy of nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression or gender presentation in its employment practices, you should not expect lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender, gender-nonconforming, queer, and/or questioning patients and families to feel safe seeking out your services.”
― Kimberly D. Acquaviva, LGBTQ-Inclusive Hospice and Palliative Care: A Practical Guide to Transforming Professional Practice

“The habit of questioning authority is one of the most valuable gifts that a book, or a teacher, can give a young would-be scientist.”
― Richard Dawkins, Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist

“It is really quite impossible to be affirmative about anything which one refuses to question; one is doomed to remain inarticulate about about anything which one hasn’t, by an act of the imagination, made one’s own.”
― James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

“Was she in any way like us? thinks Tony. Or, to put it the other way around: Are we in any way like her?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

“It is fear that reinforces the walls we build, people are afraid to be swayed from their convictions, afraid to question their moral instincts and expose themselves to ideas that may challenge the fabric of their entire existence, but what are we if we are not seeking to better ourselves?”
― Aysha Taryam

“Of everything we must first ask: is it real or not?”
― Mike Klepper

“They say "doubt everything," but I disagree. Doubt is useful in small amounts, but too much of it leads to apathy and confusion. No, don't doubt everything. QUESTION everything. That's the real trick. Doubt is just a lack of certainty. If you doubt everything, you'll doubt evolution, science, faith, morality, even reality itself - and you'll end up with nothing, because doubt doesn't give anything back. But questions have answers, you see. If you question everything, you'll find that a lot of what we believe is untrue...but you might also discover that some things ARE true. You might discover what your own beliefs are. And then you'll question them again, and again, eliminating flaws, discovering lies, until you get as close to the truth as you can.

Questioning is a lifelong process. That's precisely what makes it so unlike doubt. Questioning engages with reality, interrogating all it sees. Questioning leads to a constant assault on the intellectual status quo, where doubt is far more likely to lead to resigned acceptance. After all, when the possibility of truth is doubtful (excuse the pun), why not simply play along with the most convenient lie?

Questioning is progress, but doubt is stagnation.”
― Tom Jubert / Jonas Kyratzes

“It’s not like you have anything to lose anymore.”
My fingers stop at my thumb ring while Sienna’s words echo in my head. Do I have anything to lose? I mean, after all I did, everything I fought against.
I slowly turn the ring on my thumb. This simple band has, like all of my rings, one word engraved on it.
Will anything change if I go to him? After all, I did lose everything that is important.
It’s funny, actually, after the months I spent pushing him away. I thought, like the silly girl I probably am, that if I didn’t give myself to him, I’d be safe, that as long as I didn’t sleep with him, I wouldn’t lose my heart. Shouldn’t I have this one last memory to take home with me?
So lost…I came here lost and I’ll go home lost. How convenient, and so utterly pathetic I want to give myself one strong shake to snap out of this.”
― Anna B. Doe, Lost & Found: Anabel & William #1

“Gradually, I realized that the ideas I had embraced and defended blindly all my life represented a singular, and highly radical, point of view. I began to question everything.”
― Manal al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening

“Selim, you will speak with your kin and your friends in Gurneh; perhaps some of them will respond to direct threats--questions, I mean to say.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Golden One

“The first time we met I told you I was a detective. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady. I don't play at it.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“Archaeology is a deeply conservative discipline and I have found that archaeologists, no matter where they are working, have a horror of questioning anything their predecessors and peers have already announced to be true. They run a very real risk of jeopardizing their careers if they do. In consequence they focus--perhaps to a large extent subconsciously--on evidence and arguments that don't upset the applecart. There might be room for some tinkering around the edges, some refinement of orthodox ideas, but God forbid that anything should be discovered that might seriously undermine the established paradigm.”
― Graham Hancock, Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization

“The art in question is much more about open communications.”
― Pearl Zhu, 100 Digital Rules

“What do you really want in life? This is a dangerous question because you may lose a great many years to find an answer! Don’t ask! Don’t waste your time! Life will give the answers of the questions you have not even asked!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“I wonder why that is. I wonder why anything is.”
― Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture

“God is real by any name you chose, or none at all.”
― Deepak Chopra, Fire in the Heart: A Spiritual Guide for Teens

“He could have killed me for the blunder— which really wasn’t my fault— but I was lucky , and he gave me another chance. The two officers who questioned him were also incredibly lucky for not having had any idea who it was they’d been questioning.”
― Floyd C. Forsberg, The Toughest Prison of All

“Designing well-written tests still remains a challenging task. Some complex questions may lose clarity causing difficulties in providing meaningful answers. Basically, questions should be designed in such a way that each well-prepared student can easily give a correct answer.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“Aiming to check a new test's difficulty, ask your assistants to solve the test prior to the actual exam. If the results are not satisfactory, reevaluate all ambiguous questions and correct them.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“Alignment, to us, means bringing pieces into the same line - the same direction. The metaphor is that a magnet will make pieces of iron point toward it. Agreement is shared intellectual understanding. Tribes are clusters of people, and people are complex and nonrational at times. If a tribe is united only by agreement, as soon as times change, agreement has to be reestablished. If people learn new ideas or see a problem from a new perspective, they no longer agree, so tribes based on agreement often discourage learning, questioning, and independent thought. Tribes based on alignment want to maximize each person's contribution, provided that they stay pointed in the same direction like magnetized iron filings.”
― Dave Logan, Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization

“Always try to see yourself from the window of other cultures; only then you may begin questioning your own culture! And the road to freedom always starts with sincere questioning!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“All answers lie unmanifested in the form of neurochemicals in your head. Seek for them genuinely enough and they will naturally begin to manifest in your neurons.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Conscience over Nonsense

“The study of history should be a mind-altering encounter that leaves one forever unable to consider the social world without asking questions about where a claim comes from, who’s making it, and how time and place shape human behavior.”
― Sam Wineburg

“Approaching new people, never being afraid to ask questions, clearly expressing emotions, moving, playing and laughing. There is a lot we can learn from our children.”
― Freequill

“So I stayed with the old priest who was my teacher, but lots of unanswered questions always came up. Then I thought, “Why don’t you teach me anything?” But my teacher didn’t care. He just lived. He just let me be alive every day.”
― Dainin Katagiri, Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time

“There are probably no cases where there would be impossible to pose questions.”
― Thomas Vato, Questology

“Even if you know how to ask a question, you shall know how to behave with answers.”
― Thomas Vato, Questology