A Quote by Jacob Bronowski

Ask an impertinent question and you are on the way to the pertinent answer. — © Jacob Bronowski
Ask an impertinent question and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.
That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.
[John] Dalton was a man of regular habits. For fifty-seven years he walked out of Manchester every day; he measured the rainfall, the temperature-a singularly monotonous enterprise in this climate. Of all that mass of data, nothing whatever came. But of the one searching, almost childlike question about the weights that enter the construction of these simple molecules-out of that came modern atomic theory. That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.
I ask people impertinent questions. Hopefully turning up pertinent answers.
Remember, ask and you shall receive. If you ask a terrible question, you'll get a terrible answer. Your mental computer is ever ready to serve you, and whatever question you give it, it will surely come up with an answer.
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.
The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer.
It is not the writer's task to answer questions but to question answers. To be impertinent, insolent, and, if necessary, subversive.
The first question we usually ask new parents is : “Is it a boy or a girl ?”. There is a great answer to that one going around : “We don’t know ; it hasn’t told us yet.” Personally, I think no question containing “either/or” deserves a serious answer, and that includes the question of gender.
Do not ask the stones or the trees how to live, they can not tell you ; they do not have tongues; do not ask the wise man how to live for, if he knows , he will know he cannot tell you; if you would learn how to live , do not ask the question; its answer is not in the question but in the answer, which is not in words; do not ask how to live, but, instead, proceed to do so.
If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means. If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking an analysis yourself.
If you ask the wrong question, of course, you get the wrong answer. We find in design it's much more important and difficult to ask the right question. Once you do that, the right answer becomes obvious.
The class that I teach is called "The Life of a Photograph." It takes up the question, of the billion photographs that were taken today, how many will have a life, and why? So the new reality has made the question more pertinent, not less pertinent.
When you go to a voice-based interaction, you can't tell people, 'Ask me this question and structure it in this way.' And if they ask a question, and you have a bad answer, first time, maybe they'll be okay with it. Third time, they're going to say, 'This is a complete waste of time. I'm going away.'
It is frequently more rewarding merely to ask pertinent questions. It may get someone to go and look for an answer.
You ask politicians a question, and they have an answer. It's almost like the more articulate the answer, the more something feels wrong because that question takes thought.
Never in his life had occasion to ask himself, "Why are things the way they are?" Why should he bother, when the way they were was always perfect? Why are things the way they are? The question to which there is no answer, and up till then he was so blessed he didn't even know the question existed.
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