Questions Quotes - page 91
Some persons, I know, entertain a notion that the proper way to educate a young man of 18 is to put before him all the arguments and systems of belief which ever have been or can be devised, and let him take his choice; but I am quite convinced that no such notion will ever commend itself to the general mass of parents in this country. They are well aware that thorny questions of controversy are not fit for men of unripe and unpractised minds, and that the only effect of asking them to choose impartially between all beliefs is to make them think that no belief is of much importance, and that at an age when temptations are strongest they may come to the conclusion that the moral maxims which rest on belief and belief alone are mere ancient and valueless superstitions.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
The fight for ideals can no longer take the form of fight between nations, because the lines of division on moral questions are within the nations themselves and intersect the political frontiers. There is no modern State which is completely Catholic or Protestant, or liberal or autocratic, or aristocratic or democratic, or socialist or individualist; the moral and spiritual struggles of the modern world go on between citizens of the same State in unconscious intellectual cooperation with corresponding groups in other states, not between the public powers of rival States.
Norman Angell
If I go to London to acquire this part of medicine, I may see a good deal of Practice, but I am a stranger there, & have no acquaintance whom I can venture to trust so much or be so familiar with as to trouble him with all my questions and doubts.-On the contrary here, medicine is allowed on all hands to be in a very flourishing condition. It is practised in the most rational & simple manner.
Joseph Black
The American war in Vietnam raises several questions. One is whether or not small nations, in this age of super-states and and live as they feel they should. For only the people of a superpowers, will be allowed to work out their own destinies country have the right, or the spiritual power, to determine that country's way of life.
James Baldwin
I would first need to acknowledge that the mere act of creating something that questions the world and one's life in it, that exercises one's imagination, or that even pens something simply for the sake of beauty, is a kind of politics because it is determined to create awareness of some kind in some context...
Richard Blanco
We must face unconsidered possibilities and ask ourselves alarming questions–for instance, must we perhaps let the self-destroyer go if he really wants to? Trying to answer this by collecting information about our own neurones would be no more use than doing it, like the Roman augur, by inspecting the entrails of a goat.
Mary Midgley
In Galileo's time, professors of philosophy and theology-the subjects were inseparable-produced grand discourses on the nature of reality... all based on sophisticated metaphysical arguments. Meanwhile, Galileo measured how fast balls roll down inclined planes. How mundane! But the learned discourses, while grand, were vague. Galileo's investigations were clear and precise. The old metaphysics never progressed, while Galileo's work bore abundant, and at length spectacular, fruit. Galileo too cared about the big questions, but he realized that getting the genuine answers requires patience and humility before the facts.
Galileo Galilei
Although Jesus is widely considered mankind's greatest moral teacher, the greatest Christians, not to speak of scholars, have never been able to agree what his moral teachings were. Matthew, and he alone, reports that Jesus said: "Let your Yes be Yes, and your No, No." But the four Evangelists agree in ascribing to Jesus evasive and equivocal answers to plain questions, not only those of the high priest and Pilate; and quite generally the Jesus of the New Testament avoids straightforward statements, preferring parables and hyperboles. Some of the parables are so ambiguous that different Evangelists, not to speak of later theologians, offer different interpretations. ... On concrete moral issues, Jesus can be, and has been, cited on almost all sides.
Jesus Christ
I mean we live in a society full of double standards and hypocritical paradox. I don't understand why the ultra conservatives in America have a problem with a porn star being portrayed in a videogame. I mean, there is no nudity, and the game will be rated accordingly. I mean kids play games where senseless killing is ok (like Grand Theft Auto, or even BYW2), and no one questions people jumping off the roof and slamming someone's face into an abandoned car, or shooting little old ladies! No one ever need kill anyone in real life, yet sex is something that everyone, except maybe Dick Cheney, will experience as a positive thing in their lifetime! People need to relax! I want to design and star in a real adult videogame! Let people get their sexual frustrations out!
Tera Patrick
[F]iguring out where those pockets [of reducibility] are... is an essential thing... in science. ...If you just pick an arbitrary thing and say, "What's the answer to this question?" That question may not be one that has a computationally reducible answer. ...If you ...walk along the series of questions... you can go down this chain of reducible, answerable things, but if you just... pick a question at random... most likely it will be irreducible. ...When we engineer things, we tend to ...keep in this zone of reducibility. When we're thrown things by the natural world... [we're] not at all certain that we will be kept in this... zone...
Stephen Wolfram
The surrender of the Confederate armies in 1865 involved: 1. The surrender of the claim to the right of secession. 2. The surrender of the former political relations of the negro. 3. The surrender of the Southern Confederacy. These issues expired on the fields last occupied by the Confederate armies. There they should have been buried. The soldier prefers to have the sod that receives him when he falls cover his remains. The political questions of the war should have been buried upon the fields that marked their end.
James Longstreet
A history of Hitler has to be a history of his power - how he came to get it, what its character was, how he exercised it, why he was allowed to expand it to break all institutional barriers, why resistance to that power was so feeble. But these are questions to be directed at German society, not just at Hitler.
Ian Kershaw
Tell me, suit, don't you wonder if it's all worth it?'
"If what's all worth what?” it says, and I can hear that condescending tone in its voice again.
"You know; living. Is it worth all the... bother?”
"No.”
"No?”
"No, I don't ever wonder about it.”
"Why not?” I'm keeping my questions short as we walk, conserving energy and breath.
"I don't need to wonder about that. It's not important.”
"Not important?”
"It's an irrelevant question. We live; that's enough.
Iain Banks
But this still left unresolved two much harder dilemmas. What should be done with former Communist Party members and police officials? If they were not accused of specific crimes, then should they suffer any punishment at all for their past acts? Should they be allowed to participate in public life-as policemen, politicians, even prime ministers? Why not? After all, many of them had cooperated actively in the dismantling of their own regime. But if not, if there were to be restrictions placed on the civic or political rights of such people, then how long should such restrictions apply and how far down the old nomenklatura should they reach? These questions were broadly comparable to those faced by Allied occupiers of post-war Germany trying to apply their program of de-Nazification-except that after 1989 the decisions were being taken not by an army of occupation but by the parties directly concerned.
Tony Judt
Having spent the whole day sifting through incredibly depressing news reports, [the White House press corps] were bouncing back to a kind of giddy frame of mind brought on by a combination of completely natural and understandable happiness that Moab was fine...and schadenfreude directed at the social media companies that had been chipping away at their industry and their job security for the last couple of decades. Pointed questions were asked about how just unbelievably irresponsible those companies had been today and whether the scorpion-filled pits into which their executives should now be lowered should be a thousand meters deep or two thousand.
Neal Stephenson
Maybe there are lots of children or certainly those who are not drawn to my work because they don't want to see those shadows. But, I'm telling what it was like for me. And I know it was not unique for me.
I've known many children, many unhappy and many disturbed children who don't know how to talk about it. And you know, the strangest thing... the fan mail I get from kids are asking me questions which they do not ask their mothers and fathers. Because if they had, why write to me, a perfect stranger?
Maurice Sendak
Sins are sin-begotten, and their seed
Bred of itself and singly procreative;
Nor is God served with setting this to this
For evil evidence of several shame,
That one may say, Lo now! so many are they;
But if one, seeing with God-illumined eyes
In his full face the encountering face of sin,
Smite once the one high-fronted head, and slay,
His will we call good service. For myself,
If ye will make a counsellor of me,
I bid you set your hearts against one thing
To burn it up, and keep your hearts on fire,
Not seeking here a sign and there a sign,
Nor curious of all casual sufferances,
But steadfast to the undoing of that thing done
Whereof ye know the being, however it be,
And all the doing abominable of God.
Who questions with a snake if the snake sting?
Who reasons of the lightning if it burn?
While these things are, deadly will these things be;
And so the curse that comes of cursed faith.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
They had always tried not to think too hard about the rules of their relationship, but the longer they were together the more this strategy of avoidance became impossible. Questions as yet unasked demanded attention. Innocent remarks and askance looks from others, a moment of contact too long in public-a note from a grocer-everything was a reminder that they were, in some contexts, living a secret. Everything was made fraught. They had never said, We are lovers, so they had never had to say, We will not disclose our relationship to all, we will hide from some. But it had been clear for months and months that this was the case.
China Miéville
"Which do you prefer?”
Armiger leaned over her and kissed her cheek. "Which what do I prefer?”
"Do you prefer making love or reading?” Her voice held a teasing note, but he had learned there were frequently hidden needs behind her teasing questions.
"To read is to make love to the world,” he said. "But to make love to a woman is to feel like the world is reading you.”
She smiled, not comprehending, and fell asleep.
Karl Schroeder
