Questioning Quotes (page 22)
In the use of force, one simplifies the situation by assuming that the evil to be overcome is clear-cut, definite, and irreversible. Hence there remains but one thing: to eliminate it. Any dialogue with the sinner, any question of the irreversibility of his act, only means faltering and failure. Failure to eliminate evil is itself a defeat. Anything that even remotely risks such defeat is in itself capitulation to evil. The irreversibility of evil then reaches out to contaminate even the...
Thomas Merton
Society functions in a way much more interesting than the multiple-choice pattern we have been rewarded for succeeding at in school. Success in life comes not from the ability to choose between the four presented answers, but from the rather more difficult and painfully acquired ability to formulate the questions.
David Mamet
Never did he once consider directing his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destroyed him ... His subconscious knew what his min did not guess-that hating them would have consumed him, burned him up like a piece of soft coal, leaving only flakes of ash and a question mark of smoke.
Toni Morrison
CALVIN:
This whole Santa Claus thing just doesn't make sense. Why all the secrecy? Why all the mystery?
If the guy exists why doesn't he ever show himself and prove it?
And if he doesn't exist what's the meaning of all this?
HOBBES:
I dunno. Isn't this a religious holiday?
CALVIN:
Yeah, but actually, I've got the same questions about God.
Bill Watterson
An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers...To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy...If I try self consciously to become a person, I will never be one. The most real people, those who are able to forget their selfish selves, who have true compassion, are usually the most distinct individuals" (30,31).
Madeleine L'Engle
I lay there silently, hoarding my small dignity. I did not ask about the gate or the closet. I did not question the bedtime ritualwhere, on the cold bathroom tiles, I was spread out dailyand examined for flaws. I did not knowthat my bones, those solids, those pieces of sculpturewould not splinter.
Anne Sexton
Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities, the political, the religious, the educational authorities who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing, forming in our minds their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable, open-mindedness;...
Timothy Leary
I hold it clear, therefore, if anything is clear about the
business, that the Eugenists do not merely mean that the mass of
common men should settle each other's marriages between them; the
question remains, therefore, whom they do instinctively trust when
they say that this or that ought to be done. What is this flying
and evanescent authority that vanishes wherever we seek to fix it?
Who is the man who is the lost subject that governs the Eugenist's
verb? In a large number of cases I think...
Gilbert K. Chesterton