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Questions about the reproductive system should be answered as naturally as ones about the railroad system.

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Marcelene Cox (1900-1998) American writer, columnist, aphorist
“Ask Any Woman” column, Ladies’ Home Journal (1946-02)
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Added on 5-Dec-22 | Last updated 27-Mar-23
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The key to any progress is to ask the question Why? All the time. Why is that child poor? Why was there a war? Why was he killed? Why is he in power? And of course questions can get you into a lot of trouble, because society is trained by those who run it to accept what goes on. Without questions we won’t make any progress at all.

Tony Benn
Tony Benn (1925-2014) British politician, writer, diarist
Interview in Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth (2013)
 
Added on 23-Nov-21 | Last updated 23-Nov-21
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The man who will not investigate both sides of a question is dishonest.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
(Attributed)
 
Added on 23-Feb-21 | Last updated 23-Feb-21
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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”
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Cunningham himself denies having said this. It was attributed to him (and so named) by Steven McGeady in the early 1980s.
 
Added on 10-Nov-20 | Last updated 10-Nov-20
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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.

John Ciardi (1916-1986) American poet, writer, critic
Manner of Speaking (1972)
 
Added on 2-Sep-20 | Last updated 2-Sep-20
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Better ask twice than lose your way once.

(Other Authors and Sources)
Danish Proverb
 
Added on 5-Feb-20 | Last updated 5-Feb-20
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When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) German philosopher and poet
(Attributed)

Frequently attributed to Nietzsche, starting in the late 1950s, but never cited and not found in any of his writings. More discussion here.
 
Added on 10-Apr-19 | Last updated 10-Apr-19
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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)
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Added on 13-Apr-18 | Last updated 13-Apr-18
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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)
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Added on 23-Feb-18 | Last updated 23-Feb-18
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“You ever fuck Susan here?” she said, her face almost touching mine.

“I’m impressed,” I said. “The question is intrusive, annoying, coarse, and voyeuristic. That’s quite a lot to get into a simple question.”

Robert B. Parker (1932-2010) American writer
Hush Money (1999)
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Added on 25-May-17 | Last updated 25-May-17
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No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Circles,” Essays: First Series (1841)
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Added on 13-Feb-17 | Last updated 13-Feb-17
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Value of a Journal. A sentence now; a sentence last year; a sentence yesterday. Tomorrow a question comes that for the first time brings together these three and shows them to be the three fractions of Unit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1837-1862)

"Notebook Delta"
 
Added on 26-Sep-16 | Last updated 27-Mar-23
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There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things.

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) Scottish-American scientist, inventor, engineer
(Attributed)

Comment to a reporter a few months before he died, as quoted in the Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers at the Library of Congress.
 
Added on 31-Mar-16 | Last updated 31-Mar-16
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“Would you like me to arrest you?” I asked. That’s an old police trick: If you just warn people they often just ignore you, but if you ask them a question then they have to think about it. Once they start to think about the consequences they almost always calm down, unless they’re drunk of course, or stoned, or aged between fourteen and twenty-one, or Glaswegian.

Ben Aaronovitch (b. 1964) British author
Moon Over Soho (2011)
 
Added on 4-Nov-15 | Last updated 4-Nov-15
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To ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem.

Carl Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychologist
Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious (1934) [tr. Hull (1959)]
 
Added on 23-Mar-15 | Last updated 23-Mar-15
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I am driven to express my faith by a series of skepticisms.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1845)
 
Added on 11-Jul-14 | Last updated 11-Jul-14
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That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974) Polish-English humanist and mathematician
The Ascent of Man ch. 4 (1973)
 
Added on 20-Nov-13 | Last updated 1-Dec-15
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To spell out the obvious is often to call it into question.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
The Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 220 (1955)
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Added on 5-Mar-12 | Last updated 24-Jun-22
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Sandman 31 p24

NORTON I: I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond life, my dear.

DEATH: Yeah, everybody wonders. And sooner or later everybody gets to find out.

Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Sandman, Book 6. Fables and Reflections, # 31 “Three Septembers and a January” (1991-10)
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Added on 9-Mar-10 | Last updated 26-Jan-24
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Ask a question and you’re a fool for three minutes; do not ask a question and you’re a fool for the rest of your life.

(Other Authors and Sources)
Chinese proverb
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 11-Feb-20
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Shake off all the fears and servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to Peter Carr (10 Aug 1787)
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Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 2-Aug-22
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