Inquiry Quotes - Page 16

• In general, inquiry ceases when we adopt a theory. After that, we overlook whatever makes against it, and see and think, and talk and write, only in its favor. Indeed, when we have a snug, comfortable theory, to which we are much attached, they appear to us as a very mean set of facts that will not square with it.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.167

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• We have reached the end of problem solving as a mode of inquiry capable of inspiring, mobilizing, and sustaining human system change. The future of Organization Development belongs to methods that affirm, compel, and accelerate anticipatory learning involving larger and larger levels of collectivity.

  David Cooperrider

  Organization, Systems Change, Development

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• Meditation is not a process of learning how to meditate; it is the very inquiry into what is meditation. To inquire into what is meditation, the mind must free itself from what it has learnt about meditation, and the freeing of the mind from what it has learnt is the beginning of meditation.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Meditation, Mind, Process

  "Talks by Krishnamurti in India 1955-1956 (Verbatim Report) Banaras, Madras, Madanapalle, Bombay". Jiddu Krishnamurti's third public talk at Rajghat, www.jkrishnamurti.com. December 25, 1955.

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• Beyond all sciences, philosophies, theologies, and histories, a child's relentless inquiry is truly all it takes to remind us that we don't know as much as we think we know.

  Criss Jami

  Children, Philosophy, Thinking

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.39, Criss Jami

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• In the deep jungles of Africa, a traveler was making a long trek. Coolies had been engaged from a tribe to carry the loads. The first day they marched rapidly and went far. The traveler had high hopes of a speedy journey. But the second morning these jungle tribesmen refused to move. For some strange reason they just sat and rested. On inquiry as to the reason for this strange behavior, the traveler was informed that they had gone too fast the first day, and that they were now waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies.

  Lettie Cowman

  Morning, Moving, Journey

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• The routine of custom tends to deaden even scientific inquiry; it stands in the way of discovery and of the active scientific worker. For discovery and inquiry are synonymous as an occupation. Science is a pursuit, not a coming into possession of the immutable; new theories as points of view are more prized than discoveries that quantitatively increase the store on hand.

  John Dewey

  Thinking, Discovery, Views

  John Dewey (2012). “Reconstruction in Philosophy”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• It's important to realize that inquiry is about noticing, not about dropping the thought... Inquiry is not about getting rid of thoughts; it's about realizing what's true for you, through awareness and unconditional self-love. Once you see the truth, the thought lets go of you, not the other way around.

  Byron Katie

  Love, Letting Go, Truth

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• The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art. He needs no one to give him an 'Art Education'; he is already qualified. He needs but to see pictures with his active mind, look into them for the things that belong to him, and he will find soon enough in himself an art connoisseur and an art lover of the first order.

  Robert Henri

  Art, Honesty, Integrity

  Robert Henri (1960). “The art spirit”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

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• No doubt metaphors are dangerous- and perhaps especially so in philosophy. But a prohibition against their use would be a willful and harmful restriction upon our powers of inquiry.

  Max Black

  Philosophy, Doubt, Would Be

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• Out-of-whack emotions are always a good beginning point for identifying beliefs that aren't really true, an easy red flag for our inquiry. Exaggerated emotions of anxiety or discouragement invite us to trace them back to the thoughts that are creating them.

  Virginia H. Pearce

  Red Flags, Creating, Anxiety

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• In shows where the audience wants to try to understand the work, the work is placed in a space of possibility where it becomes a subject of inquiry rather than being subject to conclusive interpretations. This is the gift I receive when I go abroad.

  Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

  Space, Trying, Want

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Over the meeting of the lovers I draw a veil. The burst of rapture with which they clasped each other in a wild embrace -- the many inquiries -- the fond regrets and thrilling hopes -- it is out of my power to convey. Let me, therefore, leave them to their happiness.

  George Henry Lewes

  Regret, Veils, Lovers

  George Henry Lewes (1847). “Ranthorpe ...”, p.317

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• Only by being suspended aloft, by dangling my mind in the heavens and mingling my rare thought with the ethereal air, could I ever achieve strict scientific accuracy in my survey of the vast empyrean. Had I pursued my inquiries from down there on the ground, my data would be worthless. The earth, you see, pulls down the delicate essence of thought to its own gross level.

  Aristophanes

  Essence, Data, Air

  Aristophanes (1984). “Four Plays”, Plume

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• To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Evil, Spirit, Dogmatism

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Epigrams by Ambrose Bierce”, p.2, e-artnow

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• The inquiry into Nature having thus been pursued nearly two thousand years theologically, we find by the middle of the sixteenth century some promising beginnings of a different method the method of inquiry into Nature scientifically the method which seeks not plausibilities but facts.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Years, Two, Different

  Andrew Dickson White (2012). “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom: From Creation to the Victory of Scientific and Literary Methods”, p.40, Transaction Publishers

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• The greater the interest involved in a truth the more careful, self-distrustful, and patient should be the inquiry.I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place, because, such as it is, it is better than nothing.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Self, Patient, Should

  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Edward Stowe (1889). “Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe: Compiled from Her Letters and Journals”

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• While the principles of our Constitution give just latitude to inquiry, every citizen faithful to it will deem embodied expressions of discontent and open outrages of law and patriotism as dishonorable as they are injurious

  Thomas Jefferson

  Expression, Law, Giving

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• Now we will no longer concede so easily that anyone has the truth; the rigorous methods of inquiry have spread sufficient distrust and caution, so that we experience every man who represents opinions violently in word and deed as any enemy of our present culture, or at least as a backward person. And in fact, the fervor about having the truth counts very little today in relation to that other fervor, more gentle and silent, to be sure, for seeking the truth, a search that does not tire of learning afresh and testing anew.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Enemy, Culture

  "Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits". Book by Friedrich Nietzsche, transl. by Helen Zimmern, Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself"/ aphorism 633, 1909-1913.

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• Liberals are like dogs: The liberal holds that he is true to the republic when he is true to himself. (It may not be as cozy an attitude as it sounds.) He greets with enthusiasm the fact of the journey, as a dog greets a man's invitation to take a walk. And he acts in the dog's way too, swinging wide, racing ahead, doubling back, covering many miles of territory that the man never traverses, all in the spirit of inquiry and the zest for truth. He leaves a crazy trail, but he ranges far beyond the genteel old party he walks with and he is usually in a better position to discover a skunk.

  E. B. White

  Dog, Attitude, Crazy

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• The inquiry into the proper aims and limits of State agency must be of the highest importance nay, that it is perhaps more vitally momentous than any other political question.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Agency, Political, Limits

  "The Limits of State Action". Book by David Sidorsky. Chapter 1, 1792.

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• The separation of Science from Knowledge was effected step by step as the Subjective Method was replaced by the Objective Method: i.e., when in each inquiry the phenomena of external nature ceased to be interpreted on premisses suggested by the analogies of human nature.

  George Henry Lewes

  Analogies, Steps, Separation

  George Henry Lewes (1864). “Aristotle: A Chapter from the History of Science, Including Analyses of Aristotle's Scientific Writings”, p.26

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• To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.

  H. L. Mencken

  Ignorance, Giving, Intuition

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• [E]mpathy - not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance - is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Self, Hands, Intellectual

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• One can acquire certainty only by amputating inquiry.

  Marvin Minsky

  Certainty, Acquire

  Marvin Minsky (1988). “Society Of Mind”, p.65, Simon and Schuster

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• Awakening is usually precipitated by the honest, sincere, inquiry into who you really are.

  Arjuna Ardagh

  Awakening, Honest, Sincere

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

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