Probing Quotes

• It is the excitement of becoming - always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again- but always trying and always gaining

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Fall, Patriotic, Always Trying

  Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 1965

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is largely on television and radio that real probing of what politicians are up to has to happen.

  John Humphrys

  Real, Television, Radio

  2000 The Devil's Advocate.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.

  Timothy Keller

  Reflection, Years, Long

  Timothy Keller (2008). “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism”, p.18, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A genius is a person who is seeing further and probing deeper than other people has a different set of ethical valuations from their and has energy enough to give effect to this extra vision and its valuations in whatever manner best suits his or her

  George Bernard Shaw

  People, Giving, Vision

  17 Copy quote

• I measure every grief I meet with narrow, probing eyes - I wonder if it weighs like mine - or has an easier size.

  Emily Dickinson

  Grief, Eye, Grieving

  Emily Dickinson, Helen Vendler (2010). “Dickinson”, p.250, Harvard University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antobodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.

  Timothy Keller

  Smart, Believe, Reflection

  11 Copy quote

• What probing deep Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Sleep, Mystery, Good Sleep

  THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH (1877). “FLOWER AND THORN”

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Past, Essence, Politics

  19 Copy quote

• A probing analysis of the problems of evolution forms the basis of my prose.

  Johannes V. Jensen

  Analysis, Evolution, Problem

  7 Copy quote

• Naturally, it is a terrible, despicable crime when, as in Munich, people are taken hostage, people are killed. But probing the motives of those responsible and showing that they are also individuals with families and have their own story does not excuse what they did.

  Steven Spielberg

  Taken, People, Doe

  25 Copy quote

• It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.

  Rod Serling

  Funny, Dance, Humor

  64 Copy quote

• After all my probing into the human brain, I should still be aware of mysteries and come up with them myself.

  Pamela Stephenson

  Brain, Mystery, Should

  7 Copy quote

• Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing below the surface, for a redemption and celebration of the body of the world. Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it.

  Susan Sontag

  Beauty, Women, Citizens

  Susan Sontag (1978). “On photography”, Delta

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• Become a creative thinking detective! Ask probing questions. There is no such thing as a wasted question.

  Elaine Dundon

  Thinking, Design, Creative

  Elaine DUNDON (2002). “Seeds of Innovation: Cultivating the Synergy That Fosters New Ideas”, p.38, AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn

  47 Copy quote

  Show source

• We must strive for literacy and education that teach us to never quit questioning and probing at the assumptions of the day.

  Bryant H. McGill

  Never Quit, Quitting, Assumption

  8 Copy quote

• The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Interesting, Three

  Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, Lucinda Ebersole (2005). “Conversations with Gore Vidal”, p.59, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do you realize that the 850 billion dollar bank bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50 year running budget of NASA. And so when someone says, 'We don't have enough money for this space probe.' No, it's not that you don't have enough money. It's that the distribution of money that you're spending is warped in some way that you are removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Running, Dream, Future

  8 Copy quote

• The hallmark of creative people is their mental flexibility... Sometimes they are open and probing, at others they're playful and off-the-wall. At still other times, they're critical and faultfinding. And finally they're doggedly persistent in striving to reach their goals.

  Roger von Oech

  Wall, People, Goal

  Roger Von Oech (1986). “A Kick in the Seat of the Pants: Using Your Explorer, Artist, Judge, & Warrior to Be More Creative”, Harper Perennial

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Physics is about questioning, studying, probing nature. You probe, and, if youre lucky, you get strange clues.

  Lene

  Lucky, Strange, Study

  "Q&A with Lene Hau". Interview with Harvey Blume, archive.boston.com. March 17, 2007.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent.

  Ross McKitrick

  Lying, Collaboration, Layers

  6 Copy quote

• Giorgio Agamben is possibly the most delicate and probing thinker since Walter Benjamin.

  Avital Ronell

  Thinker, Delicate

  16 Copy quote

• Since the time of the ancient Greeks a democracy has depended on its philosophers and creative artists. It can only flourish by continuous probing, prodding, and questioning of the social conditions under which man exists and tries to better himself. One of the first moves of a dictatorship is to stifle the artists and thinkers who have the ability to stir up dissent from any prescribed dogma which might enslave them. Because the artist can arouse the curiosity and conscience of his community, he becomes a threat to those who have taken power.

  Uta Hagen

  Women, Moving, Taken

  Uta Hagen (1991). “Challenge For The Actor”, p.3, Simon and Schuster

  71 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That’s why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Laughing, Interesting

  5 Copy quote

• Corruption and envy and lust for power. Cruelty and coldness. A vicious probing curiousity. Pure, poisonous, toxic malice. You have never from your earliest years shown a shred of compassion for sympathy or kindness without calculating how it would return to your advantage. You have tortured and killed without regret or hesitation; you have betrayed and intrigued and gloried in your treachery. You are a cess-pit of moral filth.

  Philip Pullman

  Kindness, Regret, Compassion

  Philip Pullman (2007). “The Amber Spyglass”, Knopf Books for Young Readers

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Keep away from physicians. It is all probing and guessing and pretending with them. They leave it to Nature to cure in her own time, but they take the credit. As well as very fat fees.

  Anthony Burgess

  Doctors, Physicians, Credit

  Nothing Like the Sun (1964)

  8 Copy quote

  Show source