A Quote by Joseph de Maistre

Every time that a man who is not an absolute fool presents you with a question he considers very problematic after giving it careful thought, distrust those quick answers that come to the mind of someone who has considered it only briefly or not at all. These answers are usually simplistic views lacking in consistency, which explain nothing, or which do not bear examination.

Joseph de Maistre

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Absolute After Answers Bear Careful Come Considered Considers Consistency Distrust Every Every Time Examination Explain Fool Giving Lacking Man Mind Nothing Only Presents Problematic Question Quick Someone Those Thought Time Very Views Which

Quote Author

Joseph de Maistre
French - Diplomat
April 1, 1753 - February 26, 1821

While testimonies can come as dramatic manifestations, they usually do not. Sometimes people think they need to have an experience like Joseph Smith's vision before they gain testimonies. If we have unrealistic expectations of how, when, or where answers come, we risk missing the answers which come as quiet, reassuring feelings and thoughts that most often come after our prayers, while we are doing something else. These answers can be equally convincing and powerful.

Allan F. Packer

Socrates himself said, 'One thing only I know, and this is that I know nothing.' Remember this statement, because it is an admission that is rare, even among philosophers. Moreover, it can be so dangerous to say in public that it can cost you your life. The most subversive people are those who ask questions. Giving answers is not nearly as threatening. Any one question can be more explosive than a thousand answers.

Jostein Gaarder

There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time; the reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives a terribly long time after the answer.

Oscar Wilde

Are you in a universe which is ruled by natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute - and knowable? Or are you in an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable miracles, an unpredictable, unknowable flux, which your mind is impotent to grasp? The nature of your actions - and of your ambition - will be different, according to which set of answers you come to accept.

Ayn Rand

Partial examination will result in partial views of truth, which are necessarily imperfect; only careful comparisons will show the complete mind of God.

Arthur Tappan Pierson

I never had faith that the answers to human problems lay in anything that could be called political. I thought the answers, if there were answers, lay someplace in man's soul.

Joan Didion

The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself and whatever science or art or course of action he engages in reacts upon and illuminates the recesses of his own mind. Thus friends seem to be only mirrors to draw out and explain to us ourselves; and that which draws us nearer our fellow man, is, that the deep Heart in one, answers the deep Heart in another, - that we find we have (a common Nature) - one life which runs through all individuals, and which is indeed Divine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've always thought that the best answers you can give are answers on the pitch, and I hope to continue doing just that, which is the most important thing.

Filippo Inzaghi

God's silences are His answers. If we only take as answers those that are visible to our senses, we are in a very elementary condition of grace.

Oswald Chambers

A man who examines the saddle and bridle and not the animal itself when he is out to buy a horse is a fool; similarly, only an absolute fool values a man according to his clothes, or according to his position, which after all is only something we wear like clothing.

Seneca the Younger

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Do not despair if the answers don't come immediately. Some answers are only revealed with the passage of time.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Every question that can be answered must beanswered or at least engaged. Illogical thought processes must bechallenged when they arise.Wrong answers must be corrected.Correct answers must be affirmed. —From the Erudite faction manifesto

Veronica Roth

We used to have lots of questions to which there were no answers. Now, with the computer, there are lots of answers to which we haven't thought up questions.

Peter Ustinov

To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a creditsystem in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

All history is an attempt to find pattern and meaning in a section of human experience, and every historian worthy of the name raises questions about man's ultimate destiny and the meaning of all history to which, as history, he can provide no answers. The answers belong to the realm of theology.