Inquiry Quotes - Page 13

• As unbalanced parties of every description can never tolerate a free inquiry of any kind, when employed against themselves, the license, and even the most temperate freedom of the press, soon excite resentment and revenge.

  John Adams

  Revenge, Party, Resentment

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.273

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• As children's inquiries are not to be slighted, so also great care is to be taken, that they never receive deceitful and illuding answers. They easily perceive when they are slighted or deceived, and quickly learn the trick of neglect, dissimulation, and falsehood, which they observe others to make use of. We are not to intrench upon truth in any conversation, but least of all with children; since, if we play false with them, we not only deceive their expectation, and hinder their knowledge, but corrupt their innocence, and teach them the worst of vices.

  John Locke

  Children, Taken, Teaching

  John Locke (2007). “Some Thoughts Concerning Education: (Including Of the Conduct of the Understanding)”, p.94, Courier Corporation

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• I write from the place of inquiry. The first draft is a discovery period to see what I know and what I don't know. My task is simply to follow the words. There are surprises along the way. I just have to get it down. Call it the sculptor's clay.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Writing, Discovery, Clay

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Alan Kay's famous aphorism is that perspective is worth 80 IQ points. An innovative insight is not the product of an individual's brilliance. It's not as if innovators' heads are wired in different ways. Innovation typically comes from looking at the world through a slightly different lens.

  Gary Hamel

  Perspective, Innovation, Different

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• Begin and you're halfway there.

  Alfred Armand Montapert

  Halfway There, Innovation, Execution

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• Obviously, if Christianity is going to survive as more than a respecter and comforter of profitable inquiries, then Christians, regardless of their organizations, are going to have to interest themselves in economy-which is to say, in nature and in work. They are going to have to give workable answers to those who say we cannot live without this economy that is destroying us and our world, who see the murder of Creation as the only way of life.

  Wendell Berry

  Christian, Organization, Our World

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• While we honour religion and believe it to be a powerful factor in elevating our race, we discriminate, as we hope our readers will also do, between it and dogmatism. Dogmatism has been the bane of civilization and a curse to mankind. It has degraded our sex, stifled intelligent inquiry, and persecuted every independent reformer and every noble cause.

  Tennessee Celeste Claflin

  Sex, Powerful, Believe

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• When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change. Personal involvement with innocent suffering, with the injustice others suffer, is the catalyst for solidarity which then gives rise to intellectual inquiry and moral reflection.

  Peter Hans Kolvenbach

  Heart, Reflection, Giving

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• Religion has been an important part of my understanding, my inquiry into what it means to be human.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Mean, Understanding, Important

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.

  Paul Kurtz

  Reality, Roots, Essentials

  Paul Kurtz “Skepticism and Humanism: The New Paradigm”, Transaction Publishers

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• I appear as a skeptic, who believes that doubt is the great engine, the great fuel of all inquiry, all discovery and all innovation.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Believe, Discovery, Innovation

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• If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Ambition, Ignorance, Civilization

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.18, Library of Alexandria

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• We need to take nostalgia seriously as an energizing impulse, maybe even a form of knowledge. The effort to revalue what has been lost can motivate serious historical inquiry; it can also cast a powerful light on the present.

  T. J. Jackson Lears

  Powerful, Light, Effort

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• We should not be too hasty in bestowing either our praise or censure on mankind, since we shall often find such a mixture of good and evil in the same character, that it may require a very accurate judgment and a very elaborate inquiry to determine on which side the balance turns.

  Henry Fielding

  Character, Evil, Balance

  Henry Fielding, Thomas Roscoe (1853). “The Works of Henry Fielding, Complete in One Volume”, p.540

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• At almost every step in life we meet with young men from whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, after careful inquiry, we never hear another word. Life certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show finely on their first newness, but cannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a very sober aspect after washing day.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Rain, Men, Firsts

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• The crime of inquiry is one which religion never has forgiven.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Crime, Forgiven

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1859). “Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources : Now First Printed”, p.30

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• Doubt, skepticism, innovation, and inquiry are the only means by which wonder, beauty, awe, and symmetry will be discovered.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Mean, Innovation, Doubt

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• One of my superstitions had always been when I started to go anywhere or do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished. I have frequently started to go places where I had never been and to which I did not know the way, depending upon making inquiries on the road, and if I got past the place without knowing it, instead of turning back, I would go until a road was found turning in the right direction, take that, and come in by the other side.

  Ulysses S. Grant

  Past, Knowing, Superstitions

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• The end of the year! I draw the balance. Inquiry of conscience and request to the Spirit for progress and maturity.

  Joseph Goebbels

  Maturity, Years, Balance

  "Michael: a German fate in diary notes". Book by Joseph Goebbels, 1926.

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• There are inquiries which are a sort of moral burglary.

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould

  Moral, Burglary

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1920). “Modes and Morals”

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• It takes a long time to write a book. I'm not going to spend that much time trying to deliver a message. The reason I do it is because I want to understand something myself. It's not a delivery device, it's an inquiry device. Didactic fiction to my mind never works. It backfires.

  Ruth Ozeki

  Book, Writing, Long

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• Even the great scientists have reported that their creative break-throughs came at a time of mental quietude. The surprising result of a nationwide inquiry among America's most eminent mathematicians, including Einstein, to find out their working methods, was that thinking 'plays only a subordinate part in the brief, decisive phase of the creative act itself'.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Thinking, Play, America

  Eckhart Tolle (2010). “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”, p.24, New World Library

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• If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.

  Byron Katie

  Moving, Fire, Hands

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• The real thing about evil," said the Witch at the doorway, "isn't any of what you said. You figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.

  Gregory Maguire

  Real, Dragons, Evil

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• Free speech is essential to education, especially to a liberal education, which encourages the search for truths in art and science. If expression is restricted, the range of inquiry is also curtailed... The beneficiaries of a free society have a duty to pursue the truth and to protect the freedom of expression that makes possible the search for a new enlightenment.

  Norman Dorsen

  Education, Art, Truth

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