Quotes on Answers

We'll lose more species of plants and animals between 2000 and 2065 than we've lost in the last 65 million years. If we don't find answers to these problems, we're gonna be victims of this extinction event that we're at fault for.

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.

First think of the person who lives in disguise, Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies. Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend, The middle of middle and the end of end? And finally give me the sound often heard During the search for a hard-to-find word. Now string them together, and answer me this, Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?

To what expedient then shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments, as laid down in the constitution? The only answer that can be given is, that as all these exterior provisions are found to be inadequate, the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government, as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.

I engage my subjects in conversation, patterned after psychiatric questioning, with the aim of discovering something about the reasoning underlying their right but especially their wrong answers.

I told him that for a modern scientist, practicing experimental research, the least that could be said, is that we do not know. But I felt that such a negative answer was only part of the truth. I told him that in this universe in which we live, unbounded in space, infinite in stored energy and, who knows, unlimited in time, the adequate and positive answer, according to my belief, is that this universe may, also, possess infinite potentialities.

People often ask me what is the most effective technique for transforming their life. It is a little embarrassing that after years and years of research and experimentation, I have to say that the best answer is - just be a little kinder.

Be thankful that sometimes God lets you struggle for a long time before that answer comes. Your character will grow; your faith will increase. There is a relationship between these two: the greater your faith, the stronger your character, and increased character enhances your ability to exercise even greater faith.

No matter how much we try to run away from this thirst for the answer to life, for the meaning of life, the intensity only gets stronger and stronger. We cannot escape these spiritual hungers.

To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading your beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife, the physical sensations of your ordinary carnal life; and simultaneously, to allow what you're reading to pierce routines, safe and impermeable, in which ordinary carnal life is tracked, charted, channeled. Then, what of the right answers, the so-called multiple-choice examination sheet with the number 2 pencil to mark one choice and one choice only?

As Kierkegaard was the first to suggest, we can never know where our prayers are likely to go nor from whom the answers will come. When we think we are nearest to God, we could be assisting the Devil.

The true test of liberty is the right to test it, the right to question it, the right to speak to my neighbors, to grab them by the shoulders and look into their eyes and ask, “Are we free?” I have thought that if we are free, the answer cannot hurt us. And if we are not free, must we not hear the answer?

Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.

Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife - what's the answer to that?

Here - at this final hour, Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes - extinguished now, and gone from us forever.... Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain - and we will smile. ...We will answer and say unto them, ‘Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever really listen to him? ...For if you did you would know him. And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him.'

Films that are entertainments give simple answers but I think that's ultimately more cynical, as it denies the viewer room to think. If there are more answers at the end, then surely it is a richer experience.

There aren't any embarrassing questions — just embarrassing answers.

Find the right questions. You don't invent the answers, you reveal the answers.

A psychologist said to me, there are only two important questions you have to ask yourself. What do you really feel? And, what do you really want? If you can answer those two, you probably can leave your neuroses behind you.

But I have to add - and this answers your other question - this catholicity in time and in space is only meaningful for me if there is, at the same time, a concentration on the Gospel.

Reason can answer questions, but imagination has to ask them.