Enquiry Quotes

• The news of the discovery spread fast all over the country, and inquisitive enquiries mingled with congratulations from this moment became the daily programme.

  Howard Carter

  Country, Congratulations, Discovery

  Howard Carter's Diary, November 7, 1922.

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature.

  Peter Medawar

  Thinking, Law, Information

  Peter Brian Medawar (1969). “Induction and intuition in scientific thought”

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Life without enquiry is not worth living for a man.

  Socrates

  Worth Living

  "The Apology of Socrates" by Plato, 399 BC.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Errors, Inquiry, Agents

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• As the artist picks his way along, rejecting and accepting as he goes, certain patterns of enquiry emerge.

  Bridget Riley

  Artist, Patterns, Way

  Bridget Riley (2009). “The Eye's Mind: Collected Writings 1965-2009”

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.

  Alfred Korzybski

  Science, Would Be, Inquiry

  16 Copy quote

• Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth; and I am sure...we both value too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our Constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition to ourselves.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Exercise, Differences, Democracy

  16 Copy quote

• I hold a beast, an angel and a madman within me.

  Dylan Thomas

  Angel, Upheaval, Beast

  126 Copy quote

• In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.

  David Hume

  Wise, Men, Facts

  David Hume (1784). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.118

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.

  Dylan Thomas

  Writing, Angel, Self

  Dylan Thomas, Paul Ferris (1985). “The collected letters”, Scribner

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

  David Hume

  School, Math, Numbers

  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding sec. 12, pt. 3 (1748)

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Truth never lost ground by enquiry.

  William Penn

  Truth, Lost

  William Penn (1726). “A Collection of the Works of William Penn: To which is Prefixed a Journal of His Life, with Many Original Letters and Papers Not Before Published”, p.852

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are all more or less ill till we find -Self-enquiry our Oneness with everyone else.

  Douglas Harding

  Self, Oneness, Spirituality

  20 Copy quote

• By doubting we are led to enquire, and by enquiry we perceive the truth.

  Peter Abelard

  Doubt, Perceive

  11 Copy quote

• The whole history of these books (i.e. the Gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Book, Men

  26 Copy quote

• Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

  Thomas Huxley

  God, Christian, Nature

  Letter to Charles Kingsley, mathcs.clarku.edu. September 23, 1860.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every disastrous accident alarms us, and sets us on enquiries concerning the principles whence it arose: Apprehensions spring up with regard to futurity: And the mind, sunk into diffidence, terror, and melancholy, has recourse to every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers, on whom our fortune is supposed entirely to depend.

  David Hume

  Spring, Intelligent, Secret

  David Hume (1788). “An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion”, p.374

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Painting is a science pursued as an enquiry into the laws of nature...Observation is considered the key to natural science.

  Bridget Riley

  Keys, Law, Painting

  9 Copy quote

• I rejoice in a belief that intellectual light will spring up in the dark corners of the earth; that freedom of enquiry will produce liberality of conduct; that mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were, made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another.

  George Washington

  Spring, War, Dark

  George Washington, Dorothy Twohig, William Wright Abbot (1987). “The Papers of George Washington: April-June 1789”

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not therefore the business of philosophy, in our present situation in the universe, to attempt to take in at once, in one view, the whole scheme of nature; but to extend, with great care and circumspection, our knowledge, by just steps, from sensible things, as far as our observations or reasonings from them will carry us, in our enquiries concerning either the greater motions and operations of nature, or her more subtile and hidden works. In this way Sir Isaac Newton proceeded in his discoveries.

  Colin Maclaurin

  Philosophy, Knowledge, Science

  Colin Maclaurin (1750). “An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries. 2. Ed”, p.20

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The rest of our enquiry is made easy because this God-Creator is openly called Father. Psycho-analysis concludes that he really is the father, clothed in the grandeur in which he once appeared to the small child.

  Sigmund Freud

  Children, Father, Atheism

  9 Copy quote

• The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable.

  Parmenides

  Thinking, Path, Persuasion

  Frag. B 2.2-6, quoted by Proclus, "Commentary on the Timaeus I", 345,

  89 Copy quote

  Show source

• The result, therefore, of this physical enquiry is that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.

  James Hutton

  Ends, Results

  31 Copy quote

• A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.

  Samuel Johnson

  Food, Men, Meditation

  'The Lives of the English Poets' (1779-81) 'Collins'

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• [No one will be able to] deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides.

  Warren E. Burger

  Life, Science, Mind

  3 Copy quote