Questioning Quotes - Page 2

I teach what compels us to question our reality

Of everything we must first ask: is it real or not?

As I go under, I wonder if there’s a reason for art?

Kelli Russell Agodon

Only the man who thinks himself a fool is as wise as he thinks.

Any halfway clever devil would decorate the highway to Hell as beautiful as possible.

One day a young daughter was watching her mother make a roast for the family. She watched as her mother cut off the two ends of the roast and put it in the pan, along with the potatoes and vegetables. Perplexed by the procedure, the child asked why her mother cut off both ends. The mother smiled and answered, “Because that’s the way grandma always did it.” The next time the child saw her grand- ma, she asked her why she did this. Her grandma answered that she had cut off the ends of her roasts and baked them in a small pan because the stove she had was so small.Like the girl’s mother, many of us do things a certain way be- cause that’s the way they have always been done, and we never nd out if those things are still relevant today. So let’s take a moment and think outside the box of what has been done in the past, asking God to reveal Himself to us afresh.

Framing the right problem is equally or even more important than solving it.

Pearl Zhu

A set of excellent questions themselves is perhaps like a poem, both philosophical and intellectual.

Pearl Zhu

The art of questioning is to ignite innovative thinking; the science of questioning is to frame system thinking, with the progressive pursuit of better solutions.

Pearl Zhu

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.

What the pundits call wishy-washiness, the Bible calls repentance.

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.

The IGAD-Plus's compromise peace agreement is probably pregnant with a noisy, perhaps thunderous baby.

Let's fall in love and screw up our lives even more?

Tamara Stamenkovic

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.

Sometimes the best answer to a question is another question. Is it not by asking questions that we stimulate each other to reach more deeply into our own source and, thereby, approach the Source, both together and in our different ways? (7)

Jean-Yves Leloup

And for the sake of humility--a characteristic crucial to sacred questioning we might do well to confess that we're capable at any moment of such bad religion ourselves.

Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both.

Regardless of your faith, you can never escape uncertainty.

Shannon L. Alder

The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks. (65)

Stephen Batchelor

I need to ask, are you afraid of spiders?"Nicholas blinked, suddenly caught off guard, "Yes, I'm afraid of spiders.""Were you always?""What are you, a psychiatrist?"Pritam took a breath. He could feel Laine's eyes on him, appraising his line of questioning."Is it possible that the trauma of losing your best friend as a child and the trauma of losing your wife as an adult and the trauma of seeing Laine's husband take his life in front of you just recently..." Pritam shrugged and raised his palms, "You see where I'm going?"Nicholas looked at Laine. She watched back. Her gray eyes missed nothing."Sure," agreed Nicholas, standing. "And my sister's nuts, too, and we both like imagining that little white dogs are big nasty spiders because our daddy died and we never got enough cuddles.""Your father died?" asked Laine. "When?""Who cares?"Pritam sighed. "You must see this from our point of - ""I'd love to!" snapped Nicholas. "I'd love to see it from your point of view, because mine is not that much fun! It's insane! It's insane that I see dead people, Pritam! It's insane that this," he flicked out the sardonyx necklace,"stopped me from kidnapping a little girl!""That's what you believe," Pritam said carefully."That's what I fucking believe!" Nicholas stabbed his finger through the air at the dead bird talisman lying slack on the coffee table.

Stephen M. Irwin

But what if hope had a threshold? What if there was a limit to it? What if each of us was only given a certain amount and mine was used up?

Once you start questioning your beliefs, that's when it's all over. It is truly doubt that kills our conviction.

Just please understand that everyone is going through a rough time as well. Even if they are hiding behind money or a simple smile. We are all continuously stumbling as we go about our lives. If we had perfect lives we'd all be perfect people. Only thing we can learn to do is endure or we will not be happy and happiness is the closest thing to perfect.

Yes, Kālāmas, it is proper that your have doubt, that you have perplexity, for a doubt has arisen in a matter which is doubtful. Now, look you Kālāmas, do not be led by reports, or traditions, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, not by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, not by the idea: 'this is our teacher'. But, O Kālāmas, when you know for yourself that certain things are unwholesome, and wrong, and bad, then give them up... And when you know for yourself that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them.

Remain in wonder if you want the mysteries to open up for you. Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. Questioners sooner or later end up in a library. Questioners sooner or later end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers.And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder.

Osho

Never question another man's motive. His wisdom, yes, but not his motives.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

I'm always talking to God about whether or not he exists - that's how I know I'm a theist.

I mean talk. Never forget that God is your friend. And like all friends, He longs to hear what's been happening in your life. Good or bad, whether it's been full of sorrow or anger, and even when you're questioning why terrible things have to happen. So I talk withhim.

Nicholas Sparks

People need to stop accepting the evidence of reality, and start questioning it.

As a writer of philosophy, it's good to ask oneself, 'Will I still believe this a week from now, or months, or even years?

Regret is counterproductive. It's looking back on a past that you can't change. Questioning things as they occur can prevent regret in the future.

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke