A Quote by Socrates

Understanding a question is half an answer. — © Socrates
Understanding a question is half an answer.

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To be a scientist you have to be willing to live with uncertainty for a long time. Research scientists begin with a question and they take a decade or two to find an answer. Then the answer they get may not even answer the question they thought it would. You have to have a supple enough mind to be open to the possibility that the answer sometimes precedes the question itself.
In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another question is not.
Intellectuals know how to answer the question, 'What God do I believe in?' not only through the question of 'What God do I abhor?' Intellectuals can also answer the question of 'What flag do I wave?' without having to answer the question of 'What flag do I burn.'
Thus the creationist's favourite question "What is the use of half an eye?" Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye.
Age-old question: Is the glass half empty or half full? Answer: Who cares? Does it really matter whether the glass is half full or half empty? The issue is whether it quenches your thirst.
There is nothing there - no soul - there is only this question about after death. The question has to die now to find the answer - your answer; not my answer - because the question is born out of the assumption, the belief, that there is something to continue after death.
To ask the 'right' question is far more important than to receive the answer. The solution of a problem lies in the understanding of the problem; the answer is not outside the problem, it is in the problem.
A dialogue is very important. It is a form of communication in which question and answer continue till a question is left without an answer. Thus the question is suspended between the two persons involved in this answer and question. It is like a bud with untouched blossoms . . . If the question is left totally untouched by thought, it then has its own answer because the questioner and answerer, as persons, have disappeared. This is a form of dialogue in which investigation reaches a certain point of intensity and depth, which then has a quality that thought can never reach.
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.
A wise man's question contains half the answer.
The importance of the question and the availability of an answer are two different things. I'm not willing to state that because the question is fundamental, therefore I possess the answer. And I'm certainly not willing to say that since I don't possess the answer, I'll pretend that I do.
In the Marquette Lecture volume, I focus on the question in the title. I emphasize the social and political costs of being a Christian in the earliest centuries, and contend that many attempts to answer the question are banal. I don't attempt a full answer myself, but urge that scholars should take the question more seriously.
The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.
It is important to realize that our inability to answer a question says nothing about whether the question itself has an answer.
I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’
I never buy anything unless I can fill out on a piece of paper my reasons. I may be wrong, but I would know the answer to that ...I'm paying $32 billion today for the Coca Cola Company because... If you can't answer that question, you shouldn't buy it. If you can answer that question, and you do it a few times, you'll make a lot of money.
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