You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

—Naguib Mahfouz

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles ‘em.

—Harper Lee

We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

—Werner Heisenberg

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.

—Thomas Pynchon

The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions.

—Claude Levi-Strauss

It is better to know some of the questions rather than to know all the answers.

—James Thurber

An answer is always a form of death.

—John Fowles

If you don’t ask “why this?” often enough, somebody will ask “why you?”

—Tom Hirshfield

Children ask better questions than adults. “May I have a cookie?” “Why is the sky blue?” and “What does a cow say?” are far more likely to elicit a cheerful response than “Where’s your manuscript?” Why haven’t you called?” and “Who’s your lawyer?”

—Fran Lebowitz

If you don’t like the question that’s asked, answer some other question.

—Howard Baker

Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.

–Frank Moore Colby

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

–Rainer Maria Rilke