Good Questions Quotes

• Good questions inform, great questions transform

  Ken Coleman

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• Good questions outrank easy answers.

  Paul Samuelson

  Nature, Asking Questions, Environmental

  Paul Anthony Samuelson (1986). “Coll Sci Pap V5”, p.561, MIT Press

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• The word 'question' is derived from the Latin quaerere 'to seek,' which is the same root as the word for quest. A creative life is a continued quest, and good questions are useful guides.

  Paul A. Kaufman

  Latin, Roots, Creative

  3 Copy quote

• Asking good questions is half of learning.

  Elijah Muhammad

  Spiritual, Asking, Half

  93 Copy quote

• The way that you become world-class is... by asking good questions.

  Tim Ferriss

  Class, Asking, World

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• Only good questions deserve good answers.

  Oscar Wilde

  Answers, Deserve

  "De Profundis". Book by Oscar Wilde, 1897.

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• In school, we're rewarded for having the answer, not for asking a good question.

  Richard Saul Wurman

  School, Asking Questions, Answers

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• The common question that gets asked in business is, why? That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, why not?

  Jeff Bezos

  Success, Business, Entrepreneur

  "Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think". Interview with Steven Levy, www.wired.com. November 13, 2011.

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• A good question has many answers.

  John Paul Caponigro

  Answers, Photographer

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• Science strives for answers, but art is happy with a good question.

  James Turrell

  Photography, Art, Creativity

  "Incredible Lightness" by Julie L. Belcove, www.harpersbazaar.com. Apr 19, 2013.

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• I personally have a great deal of respect for readers. I have a great deal of respect for the human race. I think most people can tell the difference between fiction and fact. I think that the action of writing about something does not condone it. The best thing I can ever hope to do is provide good questions, and I think I do that. I hope I do.

  Neil Gaiman

  Writing, Thinking, Race

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• Good questions work on us, we don't work on them. They are not a project to be completed but a doorway opening onto greater depth of understanding, actions that will take us into being more fully alive.

  Peter Block

  Teaching, Learning, Understanding

  Peter Block (2003). “The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters”, p.50, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

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• So for the question I go to the mystery of it and say I don't know. I only know that I am alive and there is something that manifests in my life, that it is God and one day I am going to understand my life, probably in the day that I die, or afterwards. But I try to find good questions and not good answers.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Trying, One Day

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• Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? ...a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate?

  Abraham Maslow

  Creativity, People, Might

  Abraham H. Maslow, Deborah C. Stephens (2000). “The Maslow Business Reader”, p.185, John Wiley & Sons

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• I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Children, Believe, Book

  Madeleine L'Engle (2012). “Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?”, p.987, Macmillan

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• My job is not to produce answers. My job is to produce good questions.

  Glenn Ligon

  Art, Jobs, Answers

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• It's a very good question, very direct, and I'm not going to answer it.

  George H. W. Bush

  Patriotic, Political, Answers

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• My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, So? Did you learn anything today? But not my mother. Izzy, she would say, did you ask a good question today? That difference - asking good questions - made me become a scientist.

  Isidor Isaac Rabi

  Mother, Children, School

  "Great Minds Start With Questions". Parents Magazine, September 1993.

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• My work is more about trying to ask good questions and not trying to come up with big shows. Every fashion company is doing that, every car company is doing that.

  Laurie Anderson

  Fashion, Car, Trying

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• Creativity doesn’t come from glancing quickly at your Twitter feed while in line at Starbucks. It comes from deep thought. It comes from voraciously reading books—long books that require focused attention. It comes from meaningful discourse with other intellectually curious people. It comes from listening and asking good questions.

  Joshua Rogers

  Meaningful, Book, Reading

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• The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering.

  David Whyte

  Identity, Doe, Asking

  "Big Questions to Ask Yourself Throughout Your Life" by David Whyte, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 15, 2011.

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• A good question is, of course, the key by which infinite answers can be educed.

  Isaac Asimov

  Inspirational, Wise, Wisdom

  Isaac Asimov (2012). “Foundation's Edge”, p.259, Spectra

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• In 50 years - or 20 years, or 200 years - our current epistemic horizon (the Big Bang, roughly) may look as parochial as the horizon Newton had to settle for in his day, but no doubt there will still be good questions whose answers elude us.

  Daniel Dennett

  Elude Us, Years, Doubt

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• A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.

  John Ciardi

  Change, Ideas, Growth

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• You might be thinking who is this Harry Potter girl? And what is she doing up on stage at the UN. It's a good question and trust me I have been asking myself the same thing. I don't know if I am qualified to be here. All I know is that I care about this problem. And I want to make it better.

  Emma Watson

  Girl, Thinking, Feminism

  "Emma Watson: Gender equality is your issue too". Speech at a special event for the HeForShe campaign, United Nations Headquarters, New York, www.unwomen.org. September 20, 2014.

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