Inquiry Quotes

“4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion... shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ.

...Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you... In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it... I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost...

[Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, advising him in matters of religion, 1787]”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.”
― Edwin Hubble

“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.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Thomas Paine From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

“The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

“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, Killosophy

“If the whole universe can be found in our own body and mind, this is where we need to make our inquires. We all have the answers within ourselves, we just have not got in touch with them yet. The potential of finding the truth within requires faith in ourselves.”
― Ayya Khema

“Jo's face was a study next day, for the secret rather weighed upon her, and she found it hard not to look mysterious and important. Meg observed it, but did not troubled herself to make inquiries, for she had learned that the best way to manage Jo was by the law of contraries, so she felt sure of being told everything if she did not ask.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him.”
― Plato, Euthyphro

“In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.”
― William Kingdon Clifford, Ethics of Belief and Other Essays

“All inquiries carry with them some element of risk.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“You asked me questions nobody ever asked me before. You knew that I was a murderer two times over, but you treated me like a man...”
― Richard Wright, Native Son

“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?”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“The best way to find out things, if you come to think of it, is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is like firing off a gun; bang it goes, and everything takes flight and runs for shelter. But if you sit quite still and pretend not to be looking, all the little facts will come and peck round your feet, situations will venture forth from thickets and intentions will creep out and sun themselves on a stone; and if you are very patient, you will see and understand a great deal more than a man with a gun.”
― Elspeth Huxley, The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood

“Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: Writings

“Truths are as much a matter of questions as answers.”
― Ozzie Zehner, Green Illusions

“Speaking one day to Monsieur de Buffon, on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on the footing with those of the kitchen. I think it, on the contrary, among the most useful of sciences, and big with future discoveries for the utility and safety of the human race.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: Writings

“But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Just as we may, through an appalled realization that we were unaware of what was going on in the mind of one we thought we knew, come to wonder how we ever know what another person is thinking or feeling, so too we may, having on some occasion wanted badly to understand and having clearly failed, come to wonder how we ever manage to understand, and how we know that we have succeeded.”
― Patrick Wilson

“The Metronome Principle:
The constancy of an inquiry resides not in constancy of conclusion, but in constancy of method. Observation may change the hypothesis; contradiction may change the model; new evidence may reopen a conclusion previously considered settled. The rhythm remains: distinguish observation from interpretation, interpretation from inference, inference from evidence, and evidence from proof. Preserve provenance. Seek counterexamples. Permit falsification. Revise without erasing the path by which revision became necessary.”
― John Stack IV

“The Door remains open because the inquiry remains open.”
― John Stack IV

“A preserved Miss is a vehicle by which error carries knowledge into its next state.
Every genuine, preserved Miss becomes a Hit on the inquiry.
It can miss the target and hit the map.”
― John Stack IV

“A preserved Miss is a vehicle by which error carries knowledge into its next state.
Every genuine, preserved Miss becomes a Hit on the inquiry.
It can miss the target and hit the map.
A productive Miss never ceases to be a Miss. Its value lies in what the preserved failure teaches next.”
― John Stack IV

“Des Cartes no sooner began to dig in this mine, than scepticism was ready to break in upon him. He did what he could to shut it out. Malebranche and Locke, who dug deeper, found the difficulty of keeping out this enemy still to increase; but they laboured honestly in the design. Then Berkeley, who carried on the work, despairing of securing all, bethought himself of an expedient:—By giving up the material world, which he thought might be spared without loss, and even with advantage, he hoped, by impregnable partition, to secure the world of spirits. But, alas! the “Treatise of Human Nature” wantonly sapped the foundation of this partition, and drowned all in one universal deluge.”
― Thomas Reid, Inquiry and Essays

“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail.”
― Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist

“Every answer is a placeholder for a better question.”
― Daniel Wieser

“Have you not assessed why that idea is the dominant narrative? Explore the counter narrative and then realign your position.”
― Daniel Taotua

“No mind reading, no brainwashing, eagerness unlocks the oracle.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Freedom and faith rarely dwell in the same mind. Freedom invites questioning and the search for truth, while blind faith builds barriers of fear that forbid inquiry.”
― Husam Wafaei, Honourable Defection

“We must not begin by talking of pure ideas, – vagabond thoughts that tramp the public roads without any human habitation, – but must begin with men and their conversation”
― Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vol. 7: Science and Philosophy / Vol. 8: Reviews, Correspondence and Bibliography

“I did not come to history looking for conspiracy. I came looking for gaps. What I found was that gaps have shapes. And shapes have causes.”
― Vesper Ledger, The Unseen Ledger I: The Shape of Inquiry