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- 24-Feb-21 - "Mobs and Education," Speech, Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston (16 Dec 1860) | WIST on “The Boston Mob,” speech, Antislavery Meeting, Boston (21 Oct 1855).
- 22-Feb-21 - Letter (1860) | WIST on Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing (1644).
- 21-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Memoirs of William Miller, quoted in Life (2 May 1955).
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- 20-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Remark (Winter 1927).
- 13-Feb-21 - tweet: the case of anti-cytokine therapy for Covid-19 – Med-stat.info on “The Divine Afflatus,” New York Evening Mail (16 Nov 1917).
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Quotations about answer
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.
Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham (b. 1949) American computer scientist
“Cunningham’s Law”
(Source)
Cunningham himself denies having said this. It was attributed to him (and so named) by Steven McGeady in the early 1980s.
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place, but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed, toward the hope of greening the landscape of an idea. The difference between a seed and an inert speck can be hard to see, but only one of them will grow and return itself in kind and be multiplied.
The highest truth is daiji, translated as dai jiki in Chinese scriptures. This is the subject of the question the emperor asked Bodhidharma: “What is the First Principle?” Bodhidharma said, “I don’t know.” “I don’t know” is the First Principle.
Shunryū Suzuki (1905-1971) Japanese Zen Buddhist master
Lotus Sutra No. 6 lecture, Tassajara, California (Feb 1968)
(Source)
SIR HUMPHREY: Well, Minister, if you ask me for a straight answer, then I shall say that, as far as we can see, looking at it by and large, taking one thing with another in terms of the average of departments, then in the final analysis it is probably true to say, that at the end of the day, in general terms, you would probably find that, not to put too fine a point on it, there probably wasn’t very much in it one way or the other. As far as one can see, at this stage.
An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) American writer
The Log from the Sea of Cortez, ch. 16, March 25 (1951)
(Source)
To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.
Anne Rice (b. 1941) American author [b. Howard Allen Frances O'Brien]
The Vampire Lestat, Part 5, ch. 3 (1992)
(Source)
A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss.
There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room.
George Eliot (1819-1880) English novelist [pseud. of Mary Ann Evans]
Middlemarch, Book 3, ch. 24 (1871)
(Source)
An allusion to Proverbs 15:1 "A soft answer turneth away wrath."
The trouble with life isn’t that there is no answer, it’s that there are so many answers.
“My lord,” said Lar, falling back upon the single statement that a servant may always rely upon when any other response is fraught with peril.
I doubt if there is in the world a single problem, whether social, political, or economic, which would not find ready solution if men and nations would rule their lives according to the plain teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.
“I suppose there are two views about everything,” said Mark.
“Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one.”
That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.
Sir, calumnies are answer’d best with silence.
Most people today don’t want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing. They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety. They want answers that are, in effect, escapes.
Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers.
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.