Difficult Questions Quotes

• Thinking begins when you ask really difficult questions.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Thinking, Difficult, Asks

  "Slavoj Zizek: I am not the world’s hippest philosopher!". Interview with Katie Engelhart, www.salon.com. December 29, 2012.

  85 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the matter of a difficult question it is more likely that the truth should have been discovered by the few than by the many.

  Rene Descartes

  Truth, Should Have, Matter

  11 Copy quote

• This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Essence, Heuristics, Answers

  Daniel Kahneman (2011). “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, p.16, Macmillan

  63 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.

  Salman Rushdie

  Writing, Speak, Asks

  10 Copy quote

• What is distinctive about the U.S. is that higher education is under attack not because it is failing but because it is public. It is now considered dangerous because it has the potential to function as a site where a culture of questioning can operate, the imagination can blossom, and difficult questions can be openly debated and critically engaged.

  Henry Giroux

  Imagination, Culture, Failing

  "Higher Education Under Attack: An Interview With Henry A. Giroux". Interview with C. Cryn Johannsen, www.truth-out.org. April 22, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Right answers to difficult questions are better than wrong answers to difficult questions.

  N. T. Wright

  Wrong Answers, Right Answers, Answers

  Interview with Trevin Wax, blogs.thegospelcoalition.org. November 19, 2007.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• People who face a difficult question often answer an easier one instead, without realizing it.

  Daniel Kahneman

  People, Answers, Faces

  24 Copy quote

• Psychoanalysts have been occupied for a long time with the difficult question of what the psychological conditions are which determine the form of the neurotic disease to which the individual will succumb. It is as though he had a choice between different illnesses and led by unknown impulses selected one or other of them.

  Karl Abraham

  Long, Choices, Different

  Karl Abraham (1988). “Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, M.D.”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every need brings what's needed.
  Pain bears its cure like a child.
  Having nothing produces provisions.
  Ask a difficult question,
  And the marvelous answer appears.

  Rumi

  Inspirational, Children, Pain

  10 Copy quote

• Geometry is of much assistance in architecture, and in particular it teaches us the use of the rule and compasses, by which especially we acquire readiness in making plans for buildings in their grounds, and rightly apply the square, the level, and the plummet. By means of optics the light in buildings can be drawn from fixed quarters of the sky. Difficult questions involving symmetry are solved by means of geometrical theories and methods.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Mean, Squares, Light

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book I, Chapter I, Section 4,

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every generation has to ask difficult questions about what does it mean to follow Jesus.

  Rob Bell

  Jesus, Mean, Doe

  4 Copy quote

• Iran is an ancient land, home to a proud culture with a rich heritage of learning and progress. The future of Iran will be decided by the people of Iran. Right now, the Iranian people are struggling with difficult questions about how to build a modern 21st century society that is at once Muslim, prosperous, and free. There is a long history of friendship between the American people and the people of Iran. As Iran's people move towards a future defined by greater freedom, greater tolerance, they will have no better friend than the United States of America.

  George W. Bush

  Struggle, Moving, Home

  George W. Bush's Statement on Iran, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. July 12, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the most difficult questions to answer in Christian work is, 'What do you expect to do?' You don't know what you are going to do. The only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing.......Hav e you been asking what God is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell you what He is going to do. He reveals to you who he is.

  Oswald Chambers

  Christian, Doe, Asking

  6 Copy quote

• We debated long over the situation for it is a very difficult question and all of us recognize its difficulty.

  Henry L. Stimson

  Long, Difficulty, Situation

  8 Copy quote

• What is truth? A difficult question; but I have solved it for myself by saying that it is what the 'voice within' tells you.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Inspirational, Truth, Voice

  Mahatma Gandhi (2005). “All Men Are Brothers”, p.67, A&C Black

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Church, Answers, Boundaries

  21 Copy quote

• No one doubts that pure libertarianism is simple, but that's just why it remains on the ideological fringe - because it boils down the most difficult questions in human affairs to a simple equation, a What Would the Market Do bumper sticker.

  Ross Douthat

  Simple, Doubt, Libertarian

  4 Copy quote

• Why?' is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you 'What's the time?' or 'When was the battle of 1066?' or 'How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?' The answers are easy and are, respectively, 'Seven-thirty in the evening,' 'Ten-fifteen in the morning,' and 'Don't ask stupid questions.

  Douglas Adams

  Morning, Stupid, Daddy

  4 Copy quote

• It's funny how you can't ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and see things in a new way before you realize nothing that is happening to you is normal. The trouble with you and me is we are used to what is happening to us. We grew into our lives like a kernel beneath the earth, never able to process the enigma of our composition...Nothing is normal. It is all rather odd, isn't it, our eyes in our heads, our hands with five fingers, the capacity to understand beauty, to feel love, to feel pain.

  Donald Miller

  Pain, Eye, Feet

  8 Copy quote

• One thing we have endeavoured to observe most scrupulously, namely, never to depart from the strictest facts and, in dealing with the difficult questions that have arisen during the year, we hope that we have used the utmost moderation possible under the circumstances.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Years, Facts, Moderation

  Mahatma Gandhi (1960). “1903-1905”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's a difficult question of relations between people.

  Frank Press

  People, Relation, Difficult

  4 Copy quote

• What is Truth? A difficult question; but I have solved it for myself by saying that it is what the "voice within" tells you. All that I can in true humility present to you is that Truth is not to be found by anybody who has not got an abundant sense of humility. If you would swim on the bosom of the ocean of Truth you must reduce yourself to zero.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Zero, Integrity, Ocean

  Mahatma Gandhi (2011). “The Way to God: Selected Writings from Mahatma Gandhi”, North Atlantic Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• That's a difficult question, because to consider yourself a rebel is sort of ridiculous.

  Shirley Manson

  Uprising, Rebel, Ridiculous

  4 Copy quote

• Regarding perfection, that's a very difficult question. I can say that I have superseded most in my sadhana [practice]. I am in it, and my mind and my intelligence gets better in my sadhana, and it reaches a certain place. When I stretch, I stretch in such a way that my awareness moves, and a gate of awareness finally opens... My body is a laboratory, you can say. I don't stretch my body as if it is an object. I do yoga from the self towards the body, not the other way around.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Life, Moving, Yoga

  4 Copy quote

• We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.

  Harry A. Blackmun

  Philosophy, Men, Medicine

  23 Copy quote