Inquiry famous quotes
04-09-2025
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Self-inquiry is a spiritually induced form of wintertime. It's not about looking for a right answer so much as stripping away and letting you see what is not necessary, what you can do without, what you are without your leaves.
-- Adyashanti -
No foundation that I am aware of has hired ex-journalists to promote a thoroughgoing inquiry.
-- Alexander Cockburn -
Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinion, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.
-- Aristotle -
I always assumed scientists were free to ask any question, pursue any line of inquiry without fear or reprisal.
-- Ben Stein -
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer
-- Bertrand Russell -
How did we let an ideological resistance to inquiry become such a prominent part of our society?
-- Bill Nye -
Through my own observations. I am convinced that an absolutely honest and direct inquiry into oneself will lead to understanding.
-- Bruce Lee -
Understanding requires not just a moment of perception, but a continuous awareness, a continuous state of inquiry without conclusion
-- Bruce Lee -
One must be truthful and honest in his approach; a constant independent inquiry and not blindly following a certain blue print laid down by others
-- Bruce Lee -
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 -
After you've been doing inquiry for a while, if you have the thought "She doesn't love me," you just get the immediate turnaround with a smile: "Oh, I'm not loving myself in this moment."
-- Byron Katie -
Thirst was made for water. Inquiry for truth.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. ... near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry.
-- Carl Sagan -
All inquiries carry with them some element of risk.
-- Carl Sagan -
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 -
Blind obedience is a sure sign of trouble. The likelihood of religion becoming evil is greatly diminished when there is freedom for individual thinking and when honest inquiry is encouraged.
-- Charles Kimball -
What they [the 9/11 attackers] abominate about 'the west', to put it in a phrase, is not what western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state.
-- Christopher Hitchens -
True science is never speculative; it employs hypotheses as suggesting points for inquiry, but it never adopts the hypotheses as though they were demonstrated propositions.
-- Cleveland Abbe -
When the multitude detests a man, inquiry is necessary; when the multitude likes a man, inquiry is equally necessary.
-- Confucius -
We have reached the end of problem solving as a mode of inquiry capable of inspiring, mobilizing, and sustaining human system change. The future of Organization Development belongs to methods that affirm, compel, and accelerate anticipatory learning involving larger and larger levels of collectivity.
-- David Cooperrider -
Called an inquiry into the laws which determine the division of the produce...
-- David Ricardo -
Looking at scientific inquiry, next paradigm will be based on very large datasets. Scientists are in the lead in handling very large datasets - Hubble telescope or Large Hadron Collider are massive datasets.
-- David Willetts -
The most all penetrating spirit before which will open the possibility of tilting not tables, but planets, is the spirit of free human inquiry. Believe only in that.
-- Dmitri Mendeleev -
To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.
-- E. O. Wilson -
Direct the glance of apprehension & inquiry to pure consciousness, in its own absolute Being.
-- Edmund Husserl -
I shall endeavour still further to prosecute this inquiry, an inquiry I trust not merely speculative, but of sufficient moment to inspire the pleasing hope of its becoming essentially beneficial to mankind.
-- Edward Jenner -
National languages are all huge systems of vested interests which sullenly resist critical inquiry.
-- Edward Sapir -
Literature is an inquiry into the deepest yearnings of the human spirit.
-- Ernest L. Boyer -
The separation of Science from Knowledge was effected step by step as the Subjective Method was replaced by the Objective Method: i.e., when in each inquiry the phenomena of external nature ceased to be interpreted on premisses suggested by the analogies of human nature.
-- George Henry Lewes -
Anacalypsis: An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil of the Saitic or an Inquiry into the Origin of Languages, Nations and Religions.
-- Godfrey Higgins -
The inquiries of the jurist are in truth prosecuted much as inquiry in physic and physiology was prosecuted before observation had taken the place of assumption.
-- Henry James Sumner Maine -
The usefulness of mathematics in furthering the sciences is commonly acknowledged: but outside the ranks of the experts there is little inquiry into its nature and purpose as a deliberate human activity. Doubtless this is due to the inevitable drawback that mathematical study is saturated with technicalities from beginning to end.
-- Herbert Turnbull -
Doubt is often better than overconfidence, for it leads to inquiry, and inquiry leads to invention.
-- Hudson Maxim -
Sister," he murmured, not as an inquiry, but a statement of fact. "Brother mine," she groaned... before her consciousness slipped from her grasp and she drifted away. But she would come back to him. One way or the other, she would not leave her twin ever again.
-- J.R. Ward -
A science only advances with certainty, when the plan of inquiry and the object of our researches have been clearly defined; otherwise a small number of truths are loosely laid hold of, without their connexion being perceived, and numerous errors, without being enabled to detect their fallacy.
-- Jean-Baptiste Say -
The moment philosophy supposes it can find a final and comprehensive solution, it ceases to be inquiry and becomes either apologetics or propaganda.
-- John Dewey -
The pope being informed of the great increase of Protestantism, in the year 1542 sent inquisitors to Venice to make an inquiry into the matter, and apprehend such as they might deem obnoxious persons.
-- John Foxe -
Seeking is a necessary preliminary to finding, and one who cannot endure the hardship of inquiry cannot expect to harvest the fruit of knowledge.
-- John of Salisbury -
Inquiry is more important than answers, for it is the questions we ask and the way in which we ask them that defines us.
-- John Paul Caponigro -
Theologians have a great problem because they're seeking to speak about God. Since God is the ground of everything that is, there's a sense in which every human inquiry is grist to the theological mill. Obviously, no theologian can know everything.
-- John Polkinghorne -
Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.
-- Jon Meacham -
That though we are certain of many things, yet that Certainty is no absolute Infallibility, there still remains the possibility of our being mistaken in all matters of humane Belief and Inquiry.
-- Joseph Glanvill -
There are inquiries which are a sort of moral burglary.
-- Katharine Fullerton Gerould -
I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry.
-- Learned Hand -
Science is a way to pursue one's sense of inquiry at the expense of the State.
-- Lev Artsimovich -
It is a shameful thing to be weary of inquiry when what we search for is excellent.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero -
For we can affirm with a good conscience that we have, after reading the Holy Scripture, applied ourselves and yet daily apply ourselves to the extent that the grace of the Lord permits to inquiry into and investigation of the consensus of the true and purer antiquity.
-- Martin Chemnitz -
With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley -
Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is at the heart of its limitations. It is also its greatest strength.
-- Michael Shermer -
I've never done too much inquiry into angels.
-- Misha Collins -
The method of exposition which philosophers have adopted leads many to suppose that they are simply inquiries, that they have no interest in the conclusions at which they arrive, and that their primary concern is to follow their premises to their logical conclusions.
-- Morris Raphael Cohen -
The spirit of philosophy is one of free inquiry. It suspects all authority. Its function is to trace the uncritical assumptions of human thought to their hiding places, and in this pursuit it may finally end in denial or a frank admission of the incapacity of pure reason to reach the ultimate reality.
-- Muhammad Iqbal -
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 -
Science and policy-making thrive on challenge and questioning; they are vital to the health of inquiry and democracy.
-- Nicholas Stern -
Do you train for passing tests or do you train for creative inquiry?
-- Noam Chomsky -
Mathematics is of two kinds, Rigorous and Physical. The former is Narrow: the latter Bold and Broad. To have to stop to formulate rigorous demonstrations would put a stop to most physico-mathematical inquiries. Am I to refuse to eat because I do not fully understand the mechanism of digestion?
-- Oliver Heaviside -
Never will this prevail, that the things that are not are — bar your thought from this road of inquiry.
-- Parmenides -
Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply 'given,' elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth, and fixed thereafter. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science.
-- Paul Davies -
Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.
-- Paulo Freire -
By doubting we come to inquiry. By inquiry we come to Truth.
-- Peter Abelard -
As it is, lovers of inquiry must follow their beloved wherever it may lead.
-- Plato -
The inquiry "who am I" turns the mind introvert and makes it calm.
-- Ramana Maharshi -
By the inquiry 'Who am I?'. The thought 'who am I?' will destroy all other thoughts, and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then, there will arise Self-realization.
-- Ramana Maharshi -
A university's essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism - a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else.
-- Richard Hofstadter -
Every step in the progress of this study has tended to obliterate the technical barriers by which logicians have sought to separate the inquiries relating to the several parts of man's nature.
-- Richard Owen -
As long as every question is answered by the word "God," scientific inquiry is simply impossible.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll -
By the help of microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry; hence there is a new visible world discovered to the understanding.
-- Robert Hooke -
Freedom of inquiry, freedom of discussion, and freedom of teaching - without these a university cannot exist.
-- Robert M. Hutchins -
There was an inquiry just last week about the new Bette Midler show, and I just didn't want to do that.
-- Robert Urich -
Interactive computers and software will, I think, provide a less costly method of doing some kinds of inquiry, in knowledge acquisition and even reasoning and interaction.
-- Roy Romer -
Science at its best is an open-minded method of inquiry, not a belief system.
-- Rupert Sheldrake -
Don't puzzle the mind with too many inquiries. One finds it difficult to put one single thing into practising, but dares invite distraction by filling the mind with too many things.
-- Sarada Devi -
The Mode of circular reasoning is the form used when the proof itself which ought to establish the matter of inquiry requires confirmation derived from the matter; in this case, being unable to assume either in order to establish the other, we suspend judgement about both.
-- Sextus Empiricus -
Religious freedom in an open society has the best prospects of flourishing to the extent that it expresses itself as freedom of religious inquiry.
-- Sidney Hook -
Make knowledge of the Scripture your love ... Live with them, meditate on them, make them the sole object of your knowledge and inquiries.
-- St. Jerome -
Opinion-sharing sessions are like junk food: they fill you up with starch and leave you feeling both sated and hungry. A sustained inquiry into the truth of a matter is an almost athletic experience; it may exhaust you, but it also improves you.
-- Stanley Fish -
Purity is a good mask for corruption because it discourages inquiry.
-- Steven Levitt -
The intellectual treatment of any datum, any experience, any subject, is determined by the nature of our questions, and only carried out in the answers.
-- Susanne Katherina Langer -
A kiss is an inquiry on the second floor as to what's going on on the first floor.
-- Theresa Russell -
Every politician, every member of the clerical profession, ought to incur the reasonable suspicion of being an interested supporter of false doctrines, who becomes angry at opposition, and endeavors to cast an odium on free inquiry. Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.
-- Thomas Cooper -
Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.
-- Thomas Jefferson -
I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
-- Thomas Jefferson -
If western culture is shown to be rich, it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to 'dissolve' harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind.
-- Umberto Eco -
If there were no falsehood in the world, there would be no doubt, if there were no doubt, there would be no inquiry; if no inquiry, no wisdom, no knowledge, no genius; and Fancy herself would lie muffled up in her robe, inactive, pale, and bloated.
-- Walter Savage Landor -
We have an education and business culture that tends to reward quick factual answers over imaginative inquiry. Questioning isn’t encouraged—it is barely tolerated.
-- Warren Berger -
The inquiry into the proper aims and limits of State agency must be of the highest importance nay, that it is perhaps more vitally momentous than any other political question.
-- Wilhelm von Humboldt -
The general statement that the mental faculties are class concepts, belonging to descriptive psychology, relieves us of the necessity of discussing them and their significance at the present stage of our inquiry.
-- Wilhelm Wundt -
The field of the Geologist's inquiry is the Globe itself, ... [and] it is his study to decipher the monuments of the mighty revolutions and convulsions it has suffered.
-- William Buckland -
It can scarcely be denied that the fundamental phenomena which first led mankind into chemical inquiries are those of combustion.
-- William Crookes -
If the student truly absorbs the concept of free inquiry in the field of music, unimpeded by blind adherence to doctrine and tradition, he will bring something of this approach not only to other fields of knowledge but to the conduct of his daily life,
-- William Howard Schuman -
Repeated reflection and inquiry have led me to the somewhat novel opinion, that value depends entirely upon utility.
-- William Stanley Jevons -
Truth indeed is sacred; but, as Pilate said, "What is truth?" Show us the undoubted infallible criterion of absolute truth, and we will hold it as a sacred inviolable thing. But in the absence of that infallible criterion, we have all an equal right to grope about in our search of it, and no body and no school nor clique must be allowed to set up a standard of orthodoxy which shall bar the freedom of scientific inquiry.
-- William Stanley Jevons -
I protest against deference to any man, whether John Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, or Aristotle, being allowed to check inquiry. Our science has become far too much a stagnant one, in which opinions rather than experience and reason are appealed to.
-- William Stanley Jevons -
The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food. Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.
-- William Winwood Reade
