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It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers.
--
"The Scotty Who Knew Too Much", The New Yorker (18 February 1939)

 

James Thurber

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We are, each one of us, ordained to live out our lives in the context of ultimate questions, such as:
Why is there anything at all, rather than nothing?
Where did the laws of physics come from?
Why does the universe seem so strange?
My response to such questions has been to articulate a covenant with Mystery. Others, of course, prefer to respond with answers, answers that often include a concept of god. These answers are by definition beliefs since they can neither be proven nor refuted. They may be gleaned from existing faith traditions or from personal search. God may be apprehended as a remote Author without present-day agency, or as an interested Presence with whom one can form a relationship, or as pantheistic — Inherent in All Things.
The opportunity to develop personal beliefs in response to questions of ultimacy, including the active decision to hold no Beliefs at all, is central to the human experience. The important part, I believe, is that the questions be openly encountered. To take the universe on — to ask Why Are Things As They Are? — is to generate the foundation for everything else.

 

Ursula Goodenough

 

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

 

Bertrand Russell

 

To gain knowledge, we must learn to ask the right questions; and to get answers, we must act, not wait for answers to occur to us.

 

Anatol Rapoport

 

I like talking when people ask me sensible questions. Ask me senseless questions also, but in a context, and I can have fun, I can make you laugh at my answers.

 

Shahrukh Khan

 

Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician.

 

Eugene Ionesco

 

For me there are no answers, only questions, and I am grateful that the questions go on and on. I don't look for an answer, because I don't think there is one. I'm very glad to be the bearer of a question.

 

P. L. Travers