Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know— the Church does neither.

...[T]hese people... are my dangerous accusers because those who hear them suppose that anyone who inquires into such matters... theories about the heavens... and everything below the earth... must be an atheist.

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.

As a writer of philosophy, it's good to ask oneself, 'Will I still believe this a week from now, or months, or even years?

All inquiries carry with them some element of risk.

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

The great pleasure of ignorance is the pleasure of asking questions. The man who has lost this pleasure or exchanged it for the pleasure of dogma, which is the pleasure of answering, is already beginning to stiffen.

There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed and the prejudices of their education.

The intellectual treatment of any datum, any experience, any subject, is determined by the nature of our questions, and only carried out in the answers.

The questions that are beyond the reach of economics-the beauty, dignity, pleasure and durability of life-may be inconvenient but they are important.

Tis not every question that deserves an answer.

I know of no inquiry which the impulses of man suggests that is forbidden to the resolution of man to pursue.

A sudden, bold, and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.

You don't want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions. The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel.

Questions show the mind's range, and answers its subtlety.

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.