Questioning Quotes

“Asking questions were the most important thing.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“Life was about loss. One minute standing on the promise of your dreams, then free-falling backward into nothingness. Is this what it meant to grow old? To gradually be stripped of all you cared about. And then what? Were you supposed to spend the rest of your life, dreaming about the past while you waited to die? Or did you start a new life, set the cycle in motion once again. Take the chance of losing that, too. And if you did, what happened to the old life? Did it die away from lack of attention?”
― Shelley Noble, Beach Colors

“Dare to ask questions. There are answers to any question.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“The questions we don’t ask become the puzzles we don’t solve.”
― A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar

“It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs, and at the same time, that we would be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts, and follow the flock, because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown difficult truths. It is for help in overcoming our meekness that we can turn to the philosopher.”
― Alain de Botton

“This is a hard question. But as women we have a right to ask the hard questions. The only way I have ever understood, broken free, emerged, healed, forgiven, flourished, and grown powerful is by asking the hardest questions and then living into the answers through opening up to my own terror and transmuting it into creativity. I have gotten nowhere by retreating into hand-me-down sureties or resisting the tensions that truth ignited.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine

“It is not sufficient to know the right answers. One must also know the questions that produced them. Indeed, one must also know what a question is, for not every sentence that ends with a rising intonation or begins with an interrogative is necessarily a question. There are sentences that look like questions but cannot generate any meaningful answers, and, as Francis Bacon said, if they linger in our minds, they become obstructions to clear thinking.”
― Neil Postman

“Dare to ask questions and seek answers to the puzzles of life.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“It is better to doubt that a concept is stupidly flying under your head than profoundly flying over your head.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“How can you just be so wrong about something?”
― John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“Most students have to do some work to resuscitate their childlike curiosity. The best way to do that is to start asking questions again—lots of them.”
― Hal Gregersen

“Find your freedom through questioning everything you hear and see. Be free to choose, from all possible perspectives and opinions, what builds love and harmony.”
― Raphael Zernoff

“What kind of person doesn't know whether her father was a king or a monster?”
― J.C. Carleson, The Tyrant's Daughter

“Ask many questions. Life is a learning process. You are learner. Seek answers to the puzzles of your life.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“You know what I'd love to read? A Dialogue between Bron and Shevek and Socrates. Socrates would love it too. I bet he wanted people who argued. You can tell he did, you can tell that's what he loved really, at least in The Symposium.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“To question is to grow.”
― Heather Small

“Sex is a form of exploration; it is asking questions and getting answer”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“Most of beliefs that are commonly known as scientific facts are based on various theories, which have never been validated. Many of them will never be.
Question your beliefs. Choose what promotes love and unity.”
― Raphael Zernoff

“The starting point to freedom is to begin questioning the cultural narrative you have been sold.”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“If you aren't any religion, how will you know if you should join the Y or the Jewish Community Center?”
― Judy Blume

“As I go under, I wonder if there’s a reason for art?”
― Kelli Russell Agodon, Hourglass Museum

“I sure wasn't going to ask Aunt Sally, because if she told me once that getting your period was like a moth becoming a butterfly, she'd probably say that sexual intercourse was like a deer getting antlers or something.”
― Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Alice on the Outside

“I didn’t know if I should put my faith in God or Satan. Was there really a difference at the end of the day, when we were all going to be dead souls anyway?”
― Jess C. Scott, Bedmates

“Mayhap it was not wise to question God's plans; mayhap he had been meant to live, to seek this justice, to serve some purpose. The past was the past. And the future...”
― Shelly Thacker

“Is this where the light faded out forever?
Where the cat was finally killed by caught tongue?
Where hand no longer wandered over curious texture?
Where words no longer moved past lips but died in a quiver?”
― Mellon Black, 23 Locked Doors

“Mr. Sweet answered, "THE TANK. WE DON'T HAVE ANY VACANCIES. CALL BACK TOMORROW."
"WAIT. IT'S MiKEY."
"MiKEY?"
"YEAH." I ask him if he's seen Tiger.
"That sweet delicious young thing you brought in tonight with the nice round booty? Yeah I SAW him. Said that he had NO IDEA where you were."
"I'm in my room. Where is he?"
"He left. You know that he's Sebastian Wolfe's lover?"
"I know. How long ago did he leave?"
"Two minutes.. three tops. Did you know-"
"No I DIDN'T." I hang up, put my shoes on, and run out the door.”
― Giorge Leedy, Uninhibited From Lust To Love

“Isso é ruim? Isso é traição? O que é traição? Um e-mail? Ou uma voz? Ou um cheiro? Ou um beijo? Eu gostaria de estar agora com você. De estar abraçado com você. De passar somente uma noite com Emmi. Eu fico de olhos fechados. Eu não preciso saber como você é. Eu só preciso cheirar você e beijar e sentir, bem de perto. Eu estou rindo de felicidade. Isso é traição, Emmi?”
― Daniel Glattauer, Gut gegen Nordwind

“The wrong approaches to faith and to skepticism are equally detrimental to the path. For the former declares its answers too soon and is later found false; the latter rejects sound answers altogether and hashes itself useless.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Siri, what is the meaning of life? She answers: To think about questions like this. Huh. Good one.”
― Kim Wright (The CanterburySisters)

“Wind is on fire" - beautiful words. What causes the fire, what enhances it, and what finally extinguishes it by itself or by bringing in rainclouds, gets identified with it. Do breath and life have the same relationship with each other!”
― R. N. Prasher