Asking Why Quotes - Page 2

• The question is absurd: when you ask, 'If God is both all good and all powerful, why then does He allow suffering?', what you are really asking is, 'If God is both all good and all powerful, why then can He not make me (the questioner) - who is just as much a part of a universe in which there is suffering as is any other part - be at the same time the exact same questioner, but one who is now part and parcel of a universe in which there is no suffering?' Which, reduced down, is the same thing as asking, 'Why can there not be, at the same time, X and the preclusion of X?'

  Emo Philips

  Powerful, Suffering, Doe

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• People try to reconcile you to a disappointment in love by asking why you should cherish a passion for an object that has proved itself worthless. Had you known this before, you would not have encouraged the passion; but that having been once formed, knowledge does not destroy it. If we have drank poison, finding it out does not prevent its being in our veins: so passion leaves its poison in the mind!

  William Hazlitt

  Love, Disappointment, Passion

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.496

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• You could carry your burdens lightly or with great effort. You could worry about tomorrow or not. You could imagine horrible fates or garland-filled tomorrows. None of it mattered as long as you moved, as long as you did something. Asking why was fine, but it wasn't action. Nothing brought the rewards of moving, of running. Sometimes you just do things.

  Scott Jurek

  Running, Moving, Fate

  Scott Jurek, Steve Friedman (2012). “Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness”, p.94, A&C Black

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• Nowadays, to be frank, every week is a good week for freakshow television. we might start asking, Why are there so many freaks? And why do they all want to be on television?

  Caitlin Moran

  Television, Want, Might

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• Fans always write asking why I didn't smile more in films. I smiled in `Annie Laurie`, but I can't recall that it helped much.

  Lillian Gish

  Writing, Fans, Film

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• From MARS Volume 3 by Fuyumi Soryo: Kira: “Why do you go through all that just to race? I guess asking that is the same thing as asking why I draw….probably because I’m alive….that’s all there is to it. I sense colors in you. They’re strong and beautiful….and sad. I wondered what your colors were for a long time. They’re the colors of the sunset…the blazing shades of a sunset that burn just before the darkness sets in. You said it was nothing, but there’s no one as alive as you.

  Fuyumi Soryo

  Beautiful, Strong, Sunset

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• the other guineahen died of a broken heart and we came to New York. I used to sit at a table,drawing wings with a pencil that kept breaking and i kept remembering how your mind looked when it slept for several years,to wake up asking why. So then you turned into a photograph of somebody who’s trying not to laugh at somebody who’s trying not to cry

  e. e. cummings

  New York, Heart, Years

  E. E. Cummings (2001). “Etcetera: The Unpublished Poems of E. E. Cummings”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I would have been completely brainwashed by this lopsided and racist view of the world if it weren't for my father. He was a deep thinker and an irrepressible problem solver. He was a Black Socrates, asking why and then spoiling ready-made replies.

  Walter Mosley

  Father, Views, Black

  Walter Mosley (2003). “What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace”, p.12, Black Classic Press

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• You've got to be happy if they get your facts right. Since January I don't think I've recognized a damned thing that I've filed. I just pour everything out of the boot. Otherwise you get a phone call at three in the morning asking why you left out that the candidate had his teeth drilled that morning.

  John Lindsay

  Morning, Thinking, Phones

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• One of the things that got me transitioning from physical science to brain science was asking, Why do we understand so much about the universe?

  Edward Boyden

  Brain, Physical Science, Universe

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• In studies asking why young people left their family religion, their most frequent response was unanswered doubts and questions. The researchers were surprised: They expected to hear stories of broken relationships and wounded feelings. But the top reason given by young adults was that they did not get answers to their questions.

  Nancy Pearcey

  People, Broken, Feelings

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• We should, can and most of the time do communicate with God directly. To my knowledge, angels are not necessary for anything. But God's creation is abundant, and asking "Why angels?" would be like asking why there are thousands of varieties of trees or stars, when we could get along with so much less. God Himself told us many times that He was sending angels to love and care for us, so He is the one who brought them into our lives. Therefore, even if we don't understand their entire purpose, I vote that we pay attention to them.

  Joan Anderson

  Stars, Angel, Tree

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• When I was 8 years old, I became depressed. I kept asking why I was born this way [without arms and legs]. I also worried about my future. At the age of 10, I tried to commit suicide because I felt like giving up. But when I imagined my loving parents crying at my grave, I decided to stay.

  Nick Vujicic

  Suicide, Giving Up, Years

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• People who aren't addicts want to know why I became one. They ask whether I had a midlife crisis. I'm only speaking for myself now, but I've stopped asking why and how. It's all about surrender and acceptance. It doesn't matter why I am an addict.

  Kevin Sessums

  Acceptance, People, Midlife

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• During World War II, Joseph Stalin was once asked by an American writer, according to Professor Dean Russell, how he could justify conscripting all the property of all the people for use by the government to fight the war. Stalin answered by asking why they considered it more immoral and illogical to conscript lifeless property than to conscript life itself, as was being done in the United States and all other capitalistic countries. His American challenger had no answer, because there was no answer.

  Ron Paul

  Country, War, Fighting

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• Occasional observers of horror movies have a nasty habit of asking why it is that there is always some poor misguided soul who opens the door to the cellar or to the attic or to the crypt when it's quite clear that no sane person would even consider it.

  Andrew Tudor

  Doors, Soul, Hollywood

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• Maybe if you stopped asking "why" all the time, you might be happy. Leave it alone, you know? Life is happy.

  Frederick Lenz

  Happiness, Buddhism, Might

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• Having spent alarmingly large chunks of my life studying the white side of the Open Sicilian, I find myself asking, why did I bother?

  Daniel J. King

  White, Chess, Sides

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• Sign your work...If you're not proud of it, don't ship it. If you are, sign your work and own the results. We'll know who to thank. If you work for a place where work goes unsigned (internally, in particular) it's worth asking why.

  Seth Godin

  Proud, Ships, Results

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• Wide awake to the presence of God, I realized I had been so focused on asking why a good God allowed bad things to happen that I was missing out on the nearness of God all along. In becoming preoccupied with the why, I was missing the who.

  Margaret Feinberg

  Missing, Becoming, Good God

  FaceBook post by Margaret Feinberg from Nov 25, 2012

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• We have peace with Israel. We're actually the last man standing. So there is going to be immense pressure and people asking, 'Why are we having this relationship when it's not benefiting anybody?' Obviously, my answer is you always benefit from peace.

  Abdallah II

  Men, Israel, People

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• Iconic Paris tells us: here are our three-star attractions, go thou and marvel. And so we gaze obediently at what we are told to gaze at, without exactly asking why.

  Julian Barnes

  Stars, Paris, Three

  "A vineyard in Montmartre: just one of the hidden pleasures of Paris" by Julian Barnes, www.theguardian.com. March 26, 2011.

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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

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• 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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