Asking Why Quotes

• All highly competent people continually search for ways to keep learning, growing, and improving. They do that by asking WHY. After all, the person who knows HOW will always have a job, but the person who knows WHY will always be the boss.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Jobs, People, Boss

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• Asking "Why?" can lead to understanding. Asking "Why not?" can lead to breakthroughs.

  Daniel H. Pink

  Education, Understanding, Why Not

  Daniel H. Pink (2006). “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future”, p.130, Penguin

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• 

  It is very important for young people keep their sense of wonder and keep asking why.

  Stephen Hawking

  People, Important, Wonder

  "Q & A: Stephen Hawking and daughter Lucy". Today interview, www.today.com. November 2, 2007.

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• 

  Keep exploring. Keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, your hard work to change the world.

  Barack Obama

  Dream, Believe, Hard Work

  "Obama To Young Scientists: ‘Keep Asking Why’" by Sara Bondioli, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 23, 2015.

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• The law of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so.

  Thomas Troward

  Creativity, Law, Innovation

  Thomas Troward (2007). “The Edinburgh and Dore Lectures on Mental Science”, p.69, Cosimo, Inc.

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• That's precisely the question everyone should be asking-why the hell not? - Why not you, why not now.

  Tim Ferriss

  Inspirational, Giving Up, Positivity

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• In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  People, Different, Finals

  129 Copy quote

• Don't spend your precious time asking "Why isn't the world a better place?" It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is "How can I make it better?" To that there is an answer.

  Leo Buscaglia

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• Five common traits of good writers: (1) They have something to say. (2) They read widely and have done so since childhood. (3) They possess what Isaac Asimov calls a "capacity for clear thought," able to go from point to point in an orderly sequence, an A to Z approach. (4) They're geniuses at putting their emotions into words. (5) They possess an insatiable curiosity, constantly asking Why and How.

  James J. Kilpatrick

  Writing, Childhood, Curiosity

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• If "there is no harm in asking," why guilt and fear when we do so?

  Mason Cooley

  Fear, Guilt, Harm

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• I think people can benefit tremendously from really asking why they're doing certain things.

  Elizabeth Holmes

  Thinking, People, Benefits

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• Instead of asking WHY you had to do it, how about just thanking Him for safely bringing you THROUGH it.

  Cupcake Brown

  Thanking Him, Asking

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• If you want to survive in this world, you need to stop asking why people work together, and just start working together.

  Dan Wells

  People, Working Together, Needs

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• There's no point in asking why, even though everybody will. I know why. The harder question is "why not?" I can't believe she ran out of answers before I did.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Believe, Why Not, Answers

  Laurie Halse Anderson (2009). “Wintergirls”, p.18, Penguin

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• I think in part the reason is that seeing an economy that is, in many ways, quite different from the one grows up in, helps crystallize issues: in one's own environment, one takes too much for granted, without asking why things are the way they are.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Growing Up, Thinking, Issues

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• I'm haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls 'tomorrow's child,' asking why we didn't do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time. Well, now is that time.

  Sylvia Earle

  Children, Ocean, Sharks

  17 Copy quote

• There exists a world. In terms of probability this borders on the impossible. It would have been far more likely if, by chance, there was nothing at all. Then, at least, no one would have began asking why there was nothing.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Borders, World, Chance

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• If anyone went on for a thousand years asking of life: 'Why are you living?' life, if it could answer, would only say, 'I live so that I may live.' That is because life lives out of its own ground and springs from its own source, and so it lives without asking why it is itself living.

  Meister Eckhart

  Spring, Live Life, Years

  Meister Eckhart, Edmund Colledge, Bernard McGinn (1981). “Meister Eckhart (CWS)”, p.184, Paulist Press

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• Can I start by asking why your drawings abnormally suck?

  Tite Kubo

  Drawing, Asking, Ichigo

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• Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands.

  Zadie Smith

  Army, Epic, Rapper

  "The House That Hova Built". www.nytimes.com. September 6, 2012.

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• Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful.
  If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful.
  If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.

  Paul Erdos

  Beautiful, Education, Math

  81 Copy quote

• Chefs think about what it's like to make food. Being a scientist in the kitchen is about asking why something works, and how it works.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Thinking, Kitchen, Chef

  7 Copy quote

• A Western upbringing tends to stress questioning authority, which is always asking why, why, why.

  Amy Chua

  Stress, Authority, Questioning

  3 Copy quote

• Marrying Cal, the scion of a family whose wealth dated to the Industrial Revolution and had multiplied through every turn of the American economy since, ought to have eased her worries about failing to climb as high as she believed she deserved. But the money was his, not theirs. The unspoken power this gave him kept her from asking: Why don't you stay home?

  Amy Waldman

  Home, Worry, Revolution

  Amy Waldman (2011). “The Submission: A Novel”, p.31, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• Scientists don't know what they are talking about when they talk about religion. Religion has nothing to do with belief, and I don't believe it has any negative impact on people's lives outside of intolerance. Why do I go to church? It's like asking, why did you marry that woman? You make up reasons, but it's probably just smell. I love the smell of candles. It's an aesthetic thing.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Believe, Impact, Talking

  "Nassim Nicholas Taleb: the Prophet of Boom and Doom" by Bryan Appleyard, www.thetimes.co.uk. June 01 2008,.

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