Inquiry Quotes - Page 16

• Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyph to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life before he apprehends it as truth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Solutions, Every Man

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.277

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Inviting people to inquiry is much more powerful to me than describing my experience... When people hear me tell the story, they often say, "Oh my goodness, I get it. I get it!" But it's not enough.

  Byron Katie

  Powerful, People, Stories

  "The Turnaround: A Byron Katie Interview". Interview with Ray Hemachandra, rayhemachandra.com. December 3, 2013.

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• Asking the questions - that's what changes lives. Every cell in your body is awake with inquiry. And you cannot believe the old thoughts again.

  Byron Katie

  Life Changing, Believe, Cells

  "The Turnaround: A Byron Katie Interview" by Ray Hemachandra, rayhemachandra.com. December 3, 2013.

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• Science is a way to pursue one's sense of inquiry at the expense of the State.

  Lev Artsimovich

  Way, States, Expenses

  Artsimovich Memorial Session of the Seventh International Conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion Research,

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• How did we let an ideological resistance to inquiry become such a prominent part of our society?

  Bill Nye

  Our Society, Resistance, Ideological

  Bill Nye (2014). “Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation”, p.17, St. Martin's Press

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• My cares and my inquiries are for decency and truth, and in this I am wholly occupied.

  Horace

  Truth, Care, Decency

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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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• Time can take nothing from the BIBLE.  It is the living monitor.  Like the sun,  it is the same in its light and influence to man this day which it was years ago.  It can meet every present inquiry and console every present loss

  Richard Cecil

  Loss, Men, Years

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• It is by losing ourselves in inquiry, creation & craft that we become something. Civilization is a continual gift of spirit: inventions, discoveries, insight, art. We are citizens, as Socrates would have said, & we have it available as our own.

  Paul Goodman

  Art, Discovery, Civilization

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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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• 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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• 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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• We need to reduce military budgets; raise living standards; engender respect for learning; support science, scholarship, invention, and industry; promote free inquiry; reduce domestic coercion; involve the workers more in managerial decisions; and promote genuine respect and understanding derived from an acknowledgement of our common humanity and our common jeopardy.

  Carl Sagan

  Military, Common Humanity, Decision

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium”, p.178, Ballantine Books

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• The British Museum was founded with a civic purpose, to allow the citizen, through reasoned inquiry and comparison, to resist the certainties that endanger free society and are still among the greatest threats to our liberty.

  Neil MacGregor

  Museums, Liberty, Citizens

  "The whole world in our hands" by Neil MacGregor, www.theguardian.com. July 23, 2004.

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• A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth.

  Charles Darwin

  Law, Direct Action, Growth

  Charles Darwin, James T. Costa (2009). “The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species”, p.486, Harvard University Press

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• The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Ignorance, Origin Of Life

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• In philosophical inquiry, the human spirit, imitating the movement of the stars, must follow a curve which brings it back to its point of departure. To conclude is to close a circle.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Stars, Philosophical, Thinking

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• We avoid the gravest difficulties when, giving up the attempt to frame hypotheses concerning the constitution of matter, we pursue statistical inquiries as a branch of rational mechanics.

  J. Willard Gibbs

  Giving Up, Branches, Matter

  "Elementary Principles in Statististical Mechanics". Book by J. Willard Gibbs (Preface, p. 9), 1902.

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• The acorn of honest inquiry has often sprouted and matured into a great oak of understanding.

  Dieter F. Uchtdorf

  Understanding, Acorns, Honest

  "Come, Join with Us". General Conference, www.lds.org. October 2013.

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