Inquiry Quotes

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
Thomas Jefferson

Others, Word, Act

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
Thomas Jefferson

Book, America, Become

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.
Aristotle

Good, Art, Thought

Educationists should build the capacities of the spirit of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership among students and become their role model.
Abdul Kalam

Leadership, Creativity, Become

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.
Richard Dawkins

Faith, Simple, Blind

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
Thomas Paine

Truth, Error, Shrinks

Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.
Ambrose Bierce

Put, Characters, Prove

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
Isaac Asimov

Great, May, Give

To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.
E. O. Wilson

Wrong, Both, Close

Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed; such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Love, Woman, Same

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
Will Durant

Certainty, Fatal

Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.
Jon Meacham

Faith, History, Doubt

True science is never speculative; it employs hypotheses as suggesting points for inquiry, but it never adopts the hypotheses as though they were demonstrated propositions.
Cleveland Abbe

Science, True, Though

Most of the time I've worked in labs if I didn't encounter something in a week entirely unexpected and surprising I'd consider it a lost week. Lots of that is due to mistakes and stupidity, but it could open a new line of inquiry. Something really good turns up once in a hundred times, but it makes the whole day worthwhile.
Lewis Thomas

Time, Good, Mistakes

Theologians have a great problem because they're seeking to speak about God. Since God is the ground of everything that is, there's a sense in which every human inquiry is grist to the theological mill. Obviously, no theologian can know everything.
John Polkinghorne

Great, God, Human

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.
Hosea Ballou

Truth, Doubt, Incentive

If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.
Alfred Korzybski

Scientific, Mankind, Rulers

Doubt comes in at the window when inquiry is denied at the door.
Benjamin Jowett

Doubt, Door, Window

An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.
John Barton

Poetry, Makes, Exciting

Poetry is but another form of inquiry into the nature of phenomena, using with its own unique procedures and tools.
John Barton

Nature, Poetry, Another

Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply 'given,' elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth, and fixed thereafter. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science.
Paul Davies

Nature, Science, Universe

National languages are all huge systems of vested interests which sullenly resist critical inquiry.
Edward Sapir

National, Interests, Critical

As one may bring himself to believe almost anything he is inclined to believe, it makes all the difference whether we begin or end with the inquiry, 'What is truth?'
Richard Whately

Truth, End, May

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer.
E. L. Doctorow

Mind, Feeling, Book

Science and policy-making thrive on challenge and questioning; they are vital to the health of inquiry and democracy.
Nicholas Stern

Health, Science, Democracy

Science at its best is an open-minded method of inquiry, not a belief system.
Rupert Sheldrake

Best, Science, Belief

And today more than ever, knowing about that society involves first of all choosing what approach the inquiry will take, and that necessarily means choosing how society can answer.
Jean-Francois Lyotard

Society, Today, Means

It is quite extraordinary how very various are the opinions entertained on this point, and, before sifting them, one must be careful in the first place to eliminate from our inquiry the cases of that considerable class of persons who pinch themselves.
James Payn

Before, Place, Themselves

The general statement that the mental faculties are class concepts, belonging to descriptive psychology, relieves us of the necessity of discussing them and their significance at the present stage of our inquiry.
Wilhelm Wundt

Present, General, Stage

The most all penetrating spirit before which will open the possibility of tilting not tables, but planets, is the spirit of free human inquiry. Believe only in that.
Dmitri Mendeleev

Human, Before, Free

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Pliny the Elder

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