This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The question, "Who ought to be boss?" is like asking "who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?" Obviously, the man who can sing tenor." - Henry Ford
"We try to evade the question [of existence] with property, prestige, power, production, fun, and, ultimately, by trying to forget that we - that I - exist. No matter how often he thinks of God or goes to church, or how much he believes in religious ideas, if he, the whole man, is deaf to the question of existence, if he does not have an answer to it, he is marking time, and he lives and dies like of the million things he produces. He thinks of God, instead of experiencing God." -
"I don’t see any reason why we should have less confidence in this kind of perception, I.e., in mathematical intuition, than in sense perception, which induces us to build up physical theories and to expect that future sense perceptions will agree with them and, moreover, to believe that a question not decidable now has meaning and may be decided in the future." - Kurt Gödel, also Goedel
"If we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God." -
"If you do not ask the right questions, you do not get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer. Asking questions is the A-B-C of diagnosis. Only the inquiring mind solves problems." - Edward Hodnett
"The silence in our lives is under assault on all fronts: roaring jets and blasting Walkmans, numbing elevator music and blaring headline news. It’s hard to genuflect to the beat of MTV. We are wired, plugged in, constantly catered to and cajoled. After a while we become terrified out of the silence, unaware of what it has to offer. We drown out the simple question of God with the simplistic sound-bites of man." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
"Poetry is not made out of the understanding. The question of common sense is always: "What is it good for?' a question which would abolish the rose, and be triumphantly answered by the cabbage." - James Russell Lowell
"The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages, but what he will do with the things he has." - Hamilton Wright Mabie
"The great question is: can war be outlawed? If so, it would mark the greatest advance in civilization since the Sermon on the Mount." - Douglas MacArthur
"A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill informed respecting a question: all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but speak he must. And if he is a man of ability, of tact, and of intrepidity, he soon find that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully." -
"To look fearlessly upon life; to accept the laws of nature, not with meek resignation, but as her sons, who dare to search and question; to have peace and confidence within our souls - these are the beliefs that make for happiness." - Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck
"Nearly every discovery in science has come as the result of providing a new question rather than a new answer." - Paul A. Meglitsch, fully Paul Allen Meglitsch
"All ideas require preparation for their meaning to engage the soul... There is no question whether they are true or not. One buys for oneself. There is no absolute truth. All truth is relative - relative to one’s needs, relative to one’s position in psychological space." - Maurice Nicoll
"There are two sides to every question." - Protagoras NULL
"It is not every question that deserves an answer." - Publius Syrus
""Did you have a happy childhood?" is a false question. As a child I did not know what happiness was, and whether I was happy or not. I was too busy being." - Paul Reichmann
"The question is, whether, like the Divine Child I the temple, we are turning knowledge into wisdom, and whether, understanding more of the mysteries of life, we are feeling more of its sacred law; and whether, having left behind the priests and the scribes and the doctors and the fathers, we are about our Father’s business, and becoming wise to God." -
"The care of rivers is not a question of rivers, but of the human heart." - Shōzō Tanaka
"If a man loves the labor of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
"The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer. That you are here - that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"“Why are we here?” is surely the most important question human beings must face, whatever their origin, whatever their belief. Our obligation is to confer meaning to life and, in doing so, overcome temptations of passivity and indifference. A person who chooses indifference is dead without knowing it. In his or her case, life has no meaning, nor does death. And yet for those who believe in sharing experiences, life does have meaning in spite of the meaningless death some of us may have witnessed. Those who share teach us that one must make every minute rich and enriching, not for oneself but for someone else, thereby creating living links between the individuals and groups. Ultimately, life is a gift and meaning is its reward. So is the art and ability of asking questions. The meaning of life is to be found in the question that becomes encounter. Then every moment becomes a moment of grace." -
"Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question." - Tennessee Williams, fully Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams
"Are you willing to think? Consider carefully, for the answer to that question will largely determine your success or failure in life. If you develop your judgment, use it. Exercise your power of judgment as often as you can, for the first rule of good judgment is practice. The functions of your mind, no less than the muscles of your body, receive their strength through repeated use." - John M. Wilson, fully John Moulder Wilson
"The answer is "I love you". The question is unimportant." - Greta Woodrew, Pseud. for Greta Andron Smolowe
"Man is not made to question, but adore." - Edward Young
"The first key to wisdom is this – constant and frequent questioning… for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth." - Peter Abelard, Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard
"Our personal question about our life’s purpose may very well be the tip as well as the foundation of the collective iceberg – part of the much larger question of where do we go from here? If we consider these individual longings in light of systems thinking, perhaps we can see them, not as isolated, narcissistic musings, but as equivalent to the DNA of our soul, the generative driver of evolution itself." - Carol Adrienne
"Question: What is the most harmful sin? Answer: The sin thou dost not know to be a sin." - Al-Anṭākī , full name Yaḥya ibn Saʿīd al-Anṭākī NULL
"If the meaning of life is not a mystery, if leading meaningful lives is within the power of all of us, then we do not need to ask the question `What’s it all about?’ in despair. We can look around us and see the many ways in which life can be meaningful. We can see the value of happiness while accepting that it is not everything, which will make it easier for us at those times when it eludes us. We can learn to appreciate the pleasure of life without becoming slaves to appetites which can never be satisfied. We can see the value of success, while not interpreting that too narrowly, so that we can appreciate the project of striving to become what we want to be as well as the more visible, public signs of success. We can see the value of seizing the day, without leading us into a desperate scramble to grasp the ungraspable moment. We can appreciate the value in helping others lead meaningful lives, too, without thinking that altruism demands everything we have. And finally, we can recognize the value of love, as perhaps the most powerful motivator to do anything at all." - Julian Baggini
"If the moral and physical fiber of its manhood and its womanhood is not a state concern, the question is, what is?" - Benjamin Cardozo, fully Benjamin Nathan Cardozo
"We are capable of finding unending meaning in a world of constant, shimmering, sometimes threatening change. The task is to keep the question of life in question, and to find in it an unending source of joy and possibility, even in the darkest of times. It is within the constant overcoming of our own limitations and habits, and of the established views of our age, that passive happiness and unreflective contentment are lost, then to be replaced by joyful activity and a glimpse of a broader, more enriching, and more responsible awareness than we have been capable of before." - Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
"Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you… Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question… Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use." - Carlos Castaneda, fully Carlos César Salvador Arana Castaneda
"What makes a marriage is the consent of the partners, their serious intention to live together in some sense, however dimly perceived, as “one flesh,” a union of their two separate existences into still a third existence, the marriage itself… The question of external status is entirely and altogether unnecessary." - William G. Cole
"Modern secularity has offered another way of dealing with religious pluralism. As religious traditions lose their importance as means of self-understanding and community identification, their differences and mutual exclusiveness diminish in importance. Alienation from any particular religious faith tends to move the question of religious particularity into the realm of indifference, as life is determined by nonreligious values and institutions. Yet secularity has been no more successful in establishing human community than has the religious vision. The competing claims of nationalism, economic imperialism, and ideological triumphalism are also demonic forms of particularity that have not been able to establish a new universality in human community." - Donald G. Dawe
"The apportioning of blame [is] the means by which society obtains a modicum of revenge for the wrong it has suffered, expiates its own guilt for such responsibility as it may have had for the event in question, and finally seeks to prevent a repetition of the disaster." - Norman F. Dixon
"The question put by a wise man is half the answer." - Jacob Emden
"The noblest question in the world is, What Good may I do in it?" - Benjamin Franklin
"The great question which I have not been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'what does a woman want?'" - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous." - Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
"At the time of writing I never think of what I have said before. My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me [at that] given moment. The result is that I have grown from truth to truth." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"A soldier is a man whose business it is to kill those who never offended him, and who are the innocent martyrs of other men’s iniquities. Whatever may become of the abstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossible that the soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural thing." - William Godwin
"How does time become holy? It becomes holy when a part of it is given to others, when we share and care and listen. Time is sanctified when we use it – to forgive and ask forgiveness; to remember things too long forgotten and to forget things too long remembered; to reclaim sacred things too casually abandoned and to abandon shabby things too highly cherished; to remember that life’s most crucial question is – how are we using time?" - Sidney Greenberg
"There is not even one single thing we value when we restrict the question to ethical values. Instead, there is a plurality of different things we value, but in ethics and in life in general. In life we value pleasure, human interaction, achievement and contact with reality. In ethics we value human flourishing but also commitment and justice per se… No single set of rules seems adequate to the irreducible plurality of incommensurable things that we value." - Patrick Grim
"Are you open to the full interrogation of life? Or are you close to the search because you believe what you’ve always believed without question? Have you pondered the logic of your experiences and dared to follow the direction of their limits and promptings?" - Os Guiness
"The seeker after truth, however, is not a conqueror but a supplicant. Because there’s no one easier to deceive than ourselves, and no bigger credibility gap than that between our truth seeking and our truth twisting, our only path to truth (and its resultant freedom) is to be transformed by it rather than trying to conquer it… We must conform to truth –or, more accurately, become captive to it. Ultimately the question for each of us is not how thoroughly we’ve searched for the truth but how searchingly the truth has examined us." - Os Guiness
"Too much to live with, too little to live for… In our own day this question of life purpose is more urgent than ever. Three factors have converged to fuel a search for significance without precedent in human history. First, the search for the purpose of life is one of the deepest issues of our experiences as human beings. Second, the expectation that we can all live purposeful lives has been given a gigantic boost by modern society’s offer of the maximum opportunity for choice and change in all we do. Third, our fulfillment is thwarted by this stunning fact: Out of more than a score of great civilizations in human history, modern Western civilization is the very first to have a no agreed-on answer to the question of the purpose of life… Most of us in the midst of material plenty, have spiritual poverty." - Os Guiness