A Quote by John Irving

People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.

John Irving

Quote Topics

Answers Ask Hear Only People Questions Ready

Quote Author

John Irving
American - Novelist
Born: March 2, 1942

Questions are great, but only if you know the answers. If you ask questions and the answers surprise you, you look silly.

Laurell K. Hamilton

If you don't ask the right questions, I can't give you the answers, and if you don't know the right question to ask, you're not ready for the answers

Ed Parker

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.

Eric Hoffer

I think as you grow up and you see things which are around you and you ask questions and you hear the answers, your situation becomes more and more of a puzzle. Now, why is it like this, why are things like this and since writing is one way in which one can ask this questions and try to find these answers, it seems to me a very natural thing to do, especially as it meant stories which I always found moving, almost unbearably necessary.

Chinua Achebe

We do not ask the right questions when we are young, so we miss the important answers. Now it is too late to ask, too late for the illuminating answers, and the unanswered questions haunt us for a lifetime.

Peter Abrahams

It's okay to ask questions, but get the answers. So, where are the answers? Since the questions came from within you, guess where the answers are? Within you.

Prem Rawat

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.

Madeleine L'Engle

By the time the people asking the questions are ready for the answers, the people doing the work have lost track of the questions.

Norman Ralph Augustine

I feel like people expect me to give them easy answers, but there aren't really easy answers. There are only harder questions. And unless we get to the harder questions part, about what this conversation is really about...of course I want an immigration bill to pass. I want people to have a driver's license and work permits and green cards and passports. But this conversation transcends this bill. We're not going to have a perfect bill. This is politics. I feel like my job is instead of giving people easy answers, my job is to actually to ask people to probe deeper.

Jose Antonio Vargas

People will continue to search for answers to universal and perplexing problems. But to find meaningful answers, one must first know what questions to ask.

Jacque Fresco

Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.

Milan Kundera

So many reporters ask a lot of crazy questions. The answers to most of these questions are so obvious, but they ask them anyway just to see what kind of reaction they can get out of you.

Monty Williams

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.

Eugene Ionesco

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.