Discourse

"... a question that has been on or in print for at least three thousand years: why is the world as it is and who or what made it that way? Universal and timeless questions have universal and timeless appeal."

"Marriages don't last. When I meet a guy, the first question I ask myself is: is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?"

"Without asking anybody’s advice, I turned myself insane."

"In how many minds should I go crazy? whom should I ask?"

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."

"To stand in the midst of … this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity in existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning, … that is what I feel to be contemptible, and this is the feeling for which I look first in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human has this feeling just because he is human."

"My friend, I ask you a plain civil question; will you give me a plain, civil answer?"

"When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory."

"I wish that objections to questions as leading, might be a little better considered before they are made. It is necessary, to a certain extent, to lead the mind of the witness to the subject of inquiry. If questions are asked, to which the answer "Yes" or "No" would be conclusive, they would certainly be objectionable, but in general no objections are more frivolous than those which are made to questions as leading ones."

"Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know."

"Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable."

"A fundamental American question is, 'What's the big idea?'"

"Old questions are not answered—they only go out of fashion."

"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?"

"To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness."

"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

"Questions are always a little more trustworthy than answers."

"If physics is too difficult for the physicists, the nonphysicist may wonder whether he should try at all to grasp its complexities and ambiguities. It is undeniably an effort, but probably one worth making, for the basic questions are important and the new experimental results are often fascinating."

"Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy."

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"

"There are these four ways of answering questions. Which four? There are questions that should be answered categorically [straightforwardly yes, no, this, that]. There are questions that should be answered with an analytical (qualified) answer [defining or redefining the terms]. There are questions that should be answered with a counter-question. There are questions that should be put aside. These are the four ways of answering questions."

"In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage."

"The value of students' questions has been emphasized by several authors (e.g. Biddulph, Symington, & Osborne, 1986; Fisher, 1990; Penick, Crow, & Bonnsteter, 1996). Questions raised by students activate their prior knowledge, focus their learning efforts, and help them elaborate on their knowledge (Schmidt, 1993). The act of ‘composing questions’ focuses the attention of students on content, main ideas, and checking if content is understood (Rosenshine, Meister, & Chapman, 1996). The ability to ask good thinking questions is also an important component of scientific literacy, where the goal of making individuals critical consumers of scientific knowledge (Millar & Osborne, 1998) requires such a facility."

"It is the fundamental duty of the citizen to resist and to restrain the violence of the state. Those who choose to disregard this responsibility can justly be accused of complicity in war crimes, which is itself designated as ‘a crime under international law’ in the principles of the Charter of Nuremberg."

"There are as many types of questions as components in the information."

"A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?"

"O my body, make of me always a man who questions!"

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

"Positive feelings come from being honest about yourself and accepting your personality, and physical characteristics, warts and all; and, from belonging to a family that accepts you without question."

"Often a question, the first one, is not the real question at all but a substitute which our unconscious self has artfully framed to protect our superficial comfort from being disturbed by a deeper, more troubling doubt."

"Scientific research is the art of asking the right question in the right way."

"Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted."

"The nature of really good questions and really good paradoxes and things that are worth spending a lifetime thinking about in this subject are simple."

"Literature is the question minus the answer."

"No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious."

"The power to question is the basis of all human progress."

"How many questions arise in this place! Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil? . . . We must continue to cry out humbly yet insistently to God: Rouse yourself! Do not forget mankind, your creature!"

"Amid this life based on coercion, one and the same thought constantly emerged among different nations, namely, that in every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and that this spiritual element strives to unite with everything of a like nature to itself, and attains this aim through love."

"In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as "we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology". The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion."

"Le souverain même n’a aucun droit d’employer la contrainte pour amener les hommes à la religion, qui suppose essentiellement choix et liberté. Ma pensée n’est pas plus soumise à l’autorité que la maladie ou la santé."

"The idea of painless, non-threatening coercion is an illusion. Fear is the inseparable companion of coercion, and its inescapable consequence. If you think it your duty to make children do what you want, whether they will or not, then it follows inexorably that you must make them afraid of what will happen to them if they don’t do what you want."

"Disorder is more exacting, arising when coercion is substituted for coordination—preventing members in a system from determining their own destiny. History is littered with examples of excluded parts rising up to confront those exclusive few who claim they are representing the whole."

"The physical capacity to coerce others can never generate a moral obligation to obey the dictates of [government] power."

"The exercise of one coercion always makes another inevitable."

"the use of threatened force, including the limited use of actual force to back up the threat, to induce an adversary to behave differently than it otherwise would."

"The capacity to resist coercion stems partly from the individual's identification with a group. The people who stood up best in the Nazi concentration camps were those who felt themselves members of a compact party (the Communists), of a church (priests and ministers), or of a close-knit national group. The individualists, whatever their nationality, caved in. The Western European Jew proved to be the most defenseless. Spurned by the Gentiles (even those within the concentration camps), and without vital ties with a Jewish community, he faced his tormentors alone—forsaken by the whole of humanity. One realizes now that the Ghetto of the Middle Ages was for the Jews more a fortress than a prison. Without the sense of utmost unity and distinctness which the ghetto imposed upon them, they could not have endured with unbroken spirit the violence and abuse of those dark centuries. When the Middle Ages returned for a brief decade in our day, they caught the Jew without his ancient defenses and crushed him."

"Legal coercion is a course which the law allows."

"The path to guidance is one of love and compassion, not of force and coercion. This hath been God’s method in the past, and shall continue to be in the future!"

"There are several ways a scoundrel might make others view him in a more positive light. One way would be to start from within, abandon evil, become good, and stop being a scoundrel. Other people would then over time naturally come to recognize the transformation. The second way would be to begin exerting pressure on others, trying to brainwash them into not recognizing a scoundrel for what he is. Finally, a scoundrel might even mount the most audacious plan, and attempt to use manipulation, lies, gaslighting, and brainwashing to turn everyone else into scoundrels too. This would offer the greatest protection."