Quotes Tagged "questioning"

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

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.

If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change.

The business of philosophy is to teach man to live in uncertainty... not to reassure him, but to upset him.

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 with him.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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)

Regardless of your faith, you can never escape uncertainty.

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

You see how it shocks and horrifies you? Our religion is based on the holy books, and you cannot conceive that they’re not perfect. You’re afraid that if one lie exists, the entire fabric could be rotten. - Ware

Curiosity takes ignorance seriously, and is confident enough to admit when it does not know. It is aware of not knowing, and it sets out to do something about it

When someone asks a question, don't assume they don't know the answer. Clever people will always test you.

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.

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)