Asking Why Quotes

• Asking "Why?" can lead to understanding. Asking "Why not?" can lead to breakthroughs.

  Daniel H. Pink

  Education, Understanding, Why Not

  Daniel H. Pink (2006). “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future”, p.130, Penguin

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• All highly competent people continually search for ways to keep learning, growing, and improving. They do that by asking WHY. After all, the person who knows HOW will always have a job, but the person who knows WHY will always be the boss.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Jobs, People, Boss

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  It is very important for young people keep their sense of wonder and keep asking why.

  Stephen Hawking

  People, Important, Wonder

  "Q & A: Stephen Hawking and daughter Lucy". Today interview, www.today.com. November 2, 2007.

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  Keep exploring. Keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, your hard work to change the world.

  Barack Obama

  Dream, Believe, Hard Work

  "Obama To Young Scientists: ‘Keep Asking Why’" by Sara Bondioli, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 23, 2015.

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• The law of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so.

  Thomas Troward

  Creativity, Law, Innovation

  Thomas Troward (2007). “The Edinburgh and Dore Lectures on Mental Science”, p.69, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I truly understand that there is a lesson in everything that happens to us. So I tried not to spend my time asking "Why did this happen to me?" but trying to figure out why I had chosen this.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Trying, Lessons, Figures

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• In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  People, Different, Finals

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• That's precisely the question everyone should be asking-why the hell not? - Why not you, why not now.

  Tim Ferriss

  Inspirational, Giving Up, Positivity

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• Don't spend your precious time asking "Why isn't the world a better place?" It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is "How can I make it better?" To that there is an answer.

  Leo Buscaglia

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• Five common traits of good writers: (1) They have something to say. (2) They read widely and have done so since childhood. (3) They possess what Isaac Asimov calls a "capacity for clear thought," able to go from point to point in an orderly sequence, an A to Z approach. (4) They're geniuses at putting their emotions into words. (5) They possess an insatiable curiosity, constantly asking Why and How.

  James J. Kilpatrick

  Writing, Childhood, Curiosity

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• I think people can benefit tremendously from really asking why they're doing certain things.

  Elizabeth Holmes

  Thinking, People, Benefits

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• If "there is no harm in asking," why guilt and fear when we do so?

  Mason Cooley

  Fear, Guilt, Harm

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• There's no point in asking why, even though everybody will. I know why. The harder question is "why not?" I can't believe she ran out of answers before I did.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Believe, Why Not, Answers

  Laurie Halse Anderson (2009). “Wintergirls”, p.18, Penguin

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• Instead of asking WHY you had to do it, how about just thanking Him for safely bringing you THROUGH it.

  Cupcake Brown

  Thanking Him, Asking

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• One of my best moves is to surround myself with friends who, instead of asking, 'Why?' are quick to say, 'Why not?' That attitude is contagious.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Attitude, Moving, Entrepreneur

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• Sadness, seriousness are parts of a psychologically sick man - they need causes. So when you are feeling happy, don't start asking, "Why am I happy?" When you are feeling sad ask why you are sad. But strangely, it has become conventional to our minds that when we are sad we accept it as if it is our nature. And when we are joyous even we are surprised; deep inside we even start worrying: "What is happening to me?"

  Rajneesh

  Sadness, Men, Worry

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• Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people?...The response would be…to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all…no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened.

  Harold S. Kushner

  People, Perfect, Forgiving

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• I have this habit of asking 'why do you want to do it?' and then interrupting them to say, 'here's why you want to do it.' Because it's in the 'yes...and' spirit [rule of improvisation].

  Mike Birbiglia

  Want, Spirit, Habit

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

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• Sometimes I am a little unkind to all my many friends in education ... by saying that from the time it learns to talk every child makes a dreadful nuisance of itself by asking 'Why?'. To stop this nuisance society has invented a marvellous system called education which, for the majority of people, brings to an end their desire to ask that question. The few failures of this system are known as scientists.

  Hermann Bondi

  Education, Children, Science

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• In science we see progress. In art there is no progress. In art the questions have always been the same. From the beginning of time till now, we are always asking the same questions. There are very few. We are looking for God, we are asking why we die, we are contemplating sex and the beauty of nature. The only thing that changes is that, in each period of questioning, we speak with the language of our time.

  Christian Boltanski

  Art, Sex, Progress

  "To die is very strange". Interview with Caia Hagel, logger.believermag.com. March 12, 2014.

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• I'm haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls 'tomorrow's child,' asking why we didn't do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time. Well, now is that time.

  Sylvia Earle

  Children, Ocean, Sharks

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• If anyone went on for a thousand years asking of life: 'Why are you living?' life, if it could answer, would only say, 'I live so that I may live.' That is because life lives out of its own ground and springs from its own source, and so it lives without asking why it is itself living.

  Meister Eckhart

  Spring, Live Life, Years

  Meister Eckhart, Edmund Colledge, Bernard McGinn (1981). “Meister Eckhart (CWS)”, p.184, Paulist Press

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• There exists a world. In terms of probability this borders on the impossible. It would have been far more likely if, by chance, there was nothing at all. Then, at least, no one would have began asking why there was nothing.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Borders, World, Chance

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• If you want to survive in this world, you need to stop asking why people work together, and just start working together.

  Dan Wells

  People, Working Together, Needs

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• I think in part the reason is that seeing an economy that is, in many ways, quite different from the one grows up in, helps crystallize issues: in one's own environment, one takes too much for granted, without asking why things are the way they are.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Growing Up, Thinking, Issues

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