Quotes
Quotes about Quest
Leave no question in anyone's mind as to where you stand.
From hence, no question, has sprung an observation . . . confirmed now into a settled opinion, that some long experienced souls in the world, before their dislodging, arrive to the height of prophetic spirit.
We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but by pictures made by himself or given to him. If his atlas tells him the world is flat he will not sail near what he believes to be the edge of our planet for fear of falling off. If his maps include a fountain of eternal youth, a Ponce de Leon will go off in quest of it. If someone digs up yellow dirt that looks like gold, he will for a time act exactly as if he has found gold. The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do. It does not determine what they will achieve. It determines their effort, their feelings, their hopes, not their accomplishments and results.
The great questions are those an intelligent child asks and, getting no answers, stops asking.
...the conviction persists - though history has shown it to be a hallucination - that all the questions that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in terms of the alternatives that the questions themselves present. But in fact intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume - an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and change of urgent interest. We do not solve them: we get over them. Old questions are solved by disappearing, evaporating, while new questions corresponding to the changed attitude of endeavor and preference take their place.
The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions.
The most basic question is not what is best but who shall decide what is best.
The question that faces every man born into this world is not what should be his purpose, which he should set about to achieve, but just what to do with life? The answer, that he should order his life so that he can find the greatest happiness in it, is more a practical question, similar to that of how a man should spend his weekend, then a metaphysical proposition as to what is the mystic purpose of his life in the scheme of the universe.
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
The ruthlessness born of self-seeking is ineffectual compared with the ruthlessness sustained by dedication to a holy cause. "God wishes," said Calvin, "that one should put aside all humanity when it is a question of striving for His glory.".
The weak are not a noble breed. Their sublime deeds of faith, daring, and self-sacrifice usually spring from questionable motives. The weak hate not wickedness but weakness; and one instance of their hatred of weakness is hatred of self. All the passionate pursuits of the weak are in some degree a striving to escape, blur, or disguise an unwanted self. It is a striving shot through with malice, envy, self-deception, and a host of petty impulses; yet it often culminates in superb achievements.
The history of science knows scores of instances where an investigator was in the possession of all the important facts for a new theory but simply failed to ask the right questions.
When your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme.
Talent is a question of quantity. Talent does not write one page: it writes three hundred.
We do not want our world to perish. But in our quest for knowledge, century by century, we have placed all our trust in a cold, impartial intellect which only brings us nearer to destruction.
When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.
Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth and the soul requires inward restfulness to attain its full height.
More important than the quest for certainty is the quest for clarity.
Life begins as a quest of the child for the man and ends as a journey by the man to rediscover the child.
The people who shape our lives and our cultures have the ability to communicate a vision or a quest or a joy or a mission.
I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that. . . you really must make the self.
Man will not live without answers to his questions.
By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.
Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.
