#Inquiry Quotes

“But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter.Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.”

“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.”

“Inside any deep asking is the answering.”

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

“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.”

“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?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Let the questions be the curriculum.”

“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?”

“Let us follow the truth whither so ever it leads.”

“Life without enquiry is not worth living for a man.”

“Understanding a question is half an answer.”

“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.”

“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?”

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

“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.”

“Philosophy begins in wonder.”

“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.”

“All men, well interrogated, answer well.”

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

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

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

“We will be better and braver if we engage and inquire than if we indulge inthe idle fancy that we already know -- or that it is of no use seeking toknow what we do not know.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

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

“For any particular thing, ask: What is it in itself? What is its nature?”

“Through doubt we arrive at the truth.”

“It is a shameful thing to be weary of inquiry when what we search for is excellent.”

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

“Philosophy is the true mother of science.”

“By doubting we come at truth.”

“It is wiser to find out than to suppose.”

“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?”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”