A Quote by Douglas Adams
Why?' is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you 'What's the time?' or 'When was the battle of 1066?' or 'How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?' The answers are easy and are, respectively, 'Seven-thirty in the evening,' 'Ten-fifteen in the morning,' and 'Don't ask stupid questions.
Related Quotes
Science only answers the question, How does it work? Or at most, What's there? Science asks what and how, philosophy asks why, myth and religion ask who. Who's in charge here? Who's the author? That's what we really long to know.
Every once in awhile, find a spot of shade, sit down on the grass or dirt, and ask yourself this question: “Do I respect myself?” A corollary to this question: “Do I respect the work I’m doing?” If the answer to the latter question is NO, then the answer to the former question will probably be NO too. If this is the case, wait a few weeks, then ask yourself the same two questions. If the answers are still NO, quit.
Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven't asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question - you have to want to know - in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.
Why ask a question whose answer would demand ten more questions?
The mathematical question is "Why?" It's always why. And the only way we know how to answer such questions is to come up, from scratch, with these narrative arguments that explain it. So what I want to do with this book is open up this world of mathematical reality, the creatures that we build there, the questions that we ask there, the ways in which we poke and prod (known as problems), and how we can possibly craft these elegant reason-poems.
It's the stupid questions that have some of the most surprising and interesting answers. Most people never think to ask the stupid questions.
Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician.
I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe.
If you write, one of the questions you're always trying to answer is, Where do you get your ideas? And, if you write, you know how pointless a question this is and how difficult it is to answer.
If someone asks a stupid question, you can only give a stupid answer or appear arrogant.
I won't call my work entertainment. It's exploring. It's asking questions of people, constantly. 'How much do you feel? How much do you know? Are you aware of this? Can you cope with this?' A good movie will ask you questions you don't already know the answers to. Why would I want to make a film about something I already understand?
The Irish question is this: Do the Irish know the answer to everything? ... And the answer to that is that we know fifteen different answers to every question. All of them right.
Questions are the important thing, answers are less important. Learning to ask a good question is the heart of intelligence. Learning the answer-well, answers are for students. Questions are for thinkers.
Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions - Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
I wanted to answer big questions about humanity, about how it is that we understand about the world, how we can know as much as we do, why human nature is the way that it is. And it always seemed to me that you find answers to those questions by looking at children.
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