Inquiry Quotes

Inside any deep asking is the answering.

To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein

Reason must approach nature in order to be taught by it. It must not, however, do so in the character of a pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to say, but of an appointed judge who compels the witness to answer questions which he has himself formulated.

Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize or accept another's dogmatism.

Skepticism, is that anything more than we used to mean when we said, Well, what have we here?

We will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.

Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.

Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding.

The variety of opinions leads to questions. Questions lead to truth.

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.

Life without enquiry is not worth living for a man.

The first duty of man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.

Lucius Cassius ille quem populus Romanus verissimum et sapientissimum iudicem putabat identidem in causis quaerere solebat 'cui bono' fuisset. The famous Lucius Cassius, whom the Roman people used to regard as a very honest and wise judge, was in the habit of asking, time and again, 'To whose benefit?

But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; - that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.

Now we will no longer concede so easily that anyone has the truth; the rigorous methods of inquiry have spread sufficient distrust and caution, so that we experience every man who represents opinions violently in word and deed as any enemy of our present culture, or at least as a backward person. And in fact, the fervor about having the truth counts very little today in relation to that other fervor, more gentle and silent, to be sure, for seeking the truth, a search that does not tire of learning afresh and testing anew.

A single question can be more influential than a thousand statements.

Philosophy is the true mother of science.

The true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things.

All men, well interrogated, answer well.

Through doubt we arrive at the truth.

There is no permanence in doubt; it incites the mind to closer inquiry and experiment, from which, if rightly managed, certainty proceeds, and in this alone can man find thorough satisfaction.

While the question of who killed President Kennedy is important, the question 'what killed him' is more important.

A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

When we have arrived at the question, the answer is already near.

The answers are all out there, we just need to ask the right questions.

The right question is usually more important than the right answer.

We must now examine whether just people also live better and are happier than unjust ones. I think it's clear already that this is so, but we must look into it further, since the argument concerns no ordinary topic, but the way we ought to live.

Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

Would that I could discover truth as easily as I can uncover falsehood.

Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.

There are chemists who spend their whole lives trying to find out what's in a lump of sugar. I want to know one thing. What is color?

Understanding a question is half an answer.

To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes - but is that all?

To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.

Difference of opinion leads to inquiry, and inquiry to the truth.

As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him.

Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose. To this single idea must the revolution be ascribed, by which, after groping in the dark for so many centuries, natural science was at length conducted into the path of certain progress.

The searching-out and thorough investigation of truth ought to be the primary study of man.

The business of philosophy is not to give rules, but to analyze the private judgments of common reason.

Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.

An intelligent mind is an inquiring mind. It is not satisfied with explanation, with conclusions. Nor is it a mind that believes, because belief is again another form of conclusion.

I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

Let the questions be the curriculum.

Let us follow the truth whither so ever it leads.

Ask the right questions, and the answers will always reveal themselves.

I roamed the countryside searching for the answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains along with the imprints of coral and plant and seaweed usually found in the sea. Why the thunder lasts a longer time than that which causes it and why immediately on its creation the lightening becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life.

Understanding requires not just a moment of perception, but a continuous awareness, a continuous state of inquiry without conclusion

It is wiser to find out than to suppose.

Then may we not fairly plead in reply that our true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things with the mental faculty fitted to do so, that is, with the faculty which is akin to reality, and which approaches and unites with it, and begets intelligence and truth as children, and is only released from travail when it has thus reached knowledge and true life and satisfaction?

A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

Through my own observations. I am convinced that an absolutely honest and direct inquiry into oneself will lead to understanding.

It is not the answers you give, but the questions you ask.

I am an investigator by inclination. I feel a great thirst for knowledge.

It is intelligent to ask two questions: (1) Is it possible? (2) Can I do it?. But it is unintelligent to ask these questions: (1) Is it real? (2) Has my neighbor done it?