Quotes about Question

The most intimate question we can ask, and the one that has the most spiritual power, is this: What or who am I?

I know what the world exists for, but I know not how it came into existence. I see the design, but not the designer. I understand the question, but not the questioner.

Life is a question asked by God about the way he exists.

God is the ultimate philosophical questioner, the one who asks the logically paradoxical ultimate philosophical question about the nature of his own existence.

Alexander the Great conquered the world by age 25. Mozart composed his first symphony by age 8. What have you done with your life?

The question is how the questioner exists.

The principal boast of electronic communication is speed, and speed doesn't help much in grasping the information - it doesn't matter if you learn about the greenhouse effects this week or next month.  What matters is that when you do hear about it you understand it so deeply and thoroughly that you begin to question the way you live.

Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
and dismiss whatever insults your own soul... 
It is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there is anything
in the known universe more divine than men and women.
The master knows that he is unspeakably great and that all are unspeakably great. 
There will soon be no more priests... They may wait awhile, perhaps a generation or two,
dropping off by degrees. A superior breed shall take their place.
A new order shall arise and they shall be the priests of man,
and every man shall be his own priest.

You have no way of knowing anything about your death, now or at the end of your so-called life. Unless knowledge, the continuity of knowledge, comes to an end, death cannot take place. You want to know something about death: you want to make that a part of your knowledge. But death is not something mysterious; the ending of that knowledge is death. What do you think will continue after death? What is there while you are living? Where is the entity there? There is nothing there -- no soul -- there is only this question about after death. The question has to die now to find the answer -- your answer; not my answer -- because the question is born out of the assumption, the belief, that there is something to continue after death.

The questioner has to come to an end. It is the questioner that creates the answer; and the questioner comes into being from the answer, otherwise there is no questioner.

You know, this dialogue is only helpful when we come, both of us, to a point and realize that no dialogue is possible, that no dialogue is necessary. When I say 'understanding', 'seeing', they mean something different to me. Understanding is a state of being where the question isn't there any more; there is nothing there that says "now I understand!" -- that's the basic difficulty between us. By understanding what I am saying, you are not going to get anywhere.

The only question in life is whether or not you are going to answer a hearty 'YES!' to your adventure.

So it's worth pondering that this whole system, which we are calling 'thought', works as a system of reflexes.  The question is: can you become aware of the reflex character of thought--that it is a reflex, that it is a whole system of reflexes which is constantly capable of being modified, added to, changed?  And we could say that as long as the reflexes are free to change then there must be some kind of intelligence or perception, something a bit beyond the reflex, which would be able to see whether it's coherent or not.  But when it gets conditioned too strongly it may resist that perception; it may not allow it.

Bohm: Your questions contain hidden assumptions; that's the point.  Therefore, when you question the question itself, you may be questioning a deeper assumption.  But that's done non-verbally.  Do you see what I mean?  To question the question eventually has to be a non-verbal act, which you can't describe.
Q: And that may break all the patterns?
Bohm: Yes, somehow it breaks the pattern.  Now, the suggestion is that this pattern of the system is not something with which we are stuck.  It may not be absolutely inevitable; there are signs that it could break.
Q: What do you mean when you say that questioning the question has to be non-verbal?
Bohm: If I say I have a question which may contain assumptions that should be questioned, I could question them verbally.  But what would lead me to question my question?  Eventually I can put it into words; but I'm saying the first step, the first flash of insight, is non-verbal.

They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

All questions depend on human creativity; and, like everything human, creativity has a limit too.

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

The question we need to ask ourselves is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that's happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.

What is Truth?
A difficult question;
but I have solved it for myself
by saying that it is
what the "voice within" tells you.

So the question is not: Why start off on such a path? You have already started off. You did so with the first beat of your heart. The question is: Do I wish to walk this path consciously, or unconsciously? With awareness or lack of awareness? As the cause of my experience, or at the effect of it?

And so you ask a very good question. Why go on? Why even start off on such a path? What is to be gained from embarking on such a journey? Where is the incentive? What is the reason?

The reason is ridiculously simple. There is nothing else to do.

What? You’re thinking for yourself? You’re deciding on your own? You’re applying your own yardsticks, your own judgments, your own values? Who do you think you are, anyway?

And, indeed, that is precisely the question you are answering.

A question mark connects one thing to many things.

You have within yourself the answer to every question you propose -- if you only knew how to look for it. In the Land of the spirit, you cannot walk by the light of someone else's lamp. You want to borrow mine. I'd rather teach you how to make your own.

"say what you want, say what you mean
question yourself, are you really what you seem?
say who you are, say what you mean
question yourself, are you really what you dream?"

Question your beliefs

Who am I? is the only question worth asking and the only one never answered. It is your destiny to play an infinity of roles, but these roles are not yourself. The spirit is non-local, but it leaves behind a fingerprint, which we call a body. A wizard does not believe himself to be a local event dreaming of a larger world. A wizard is a world dreaming of local events.

The Answer is that there is No Question