Religion has been an important part of my understanding, my inquiry into what it means to be human.

Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.

Many of the innovations in science and philosophy have come from unbelievers, some of whom died for their ‘unbeliefs.’ Without unbelief, we might well be living in the Dark Ages or at least in the...

As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him.

If the whole universe can be found in our own body and mind, this is where we need to make our inquires. We all have the answers within ourselves, we just have not got in...

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

The merits and services of Christianity have been industriously extolled by its hired advocates. Every Sunday its praises are sounded from myriads of pulpits. It enjoys the prestige of an ancient establishment and the comprehensive...

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

The determination of the average man is not merely a matter of speculative curiosity; it may be of the most important service to the science of man and the social system. It ought necessarily to...

All theology is a kind of birthdayEach one who is born Comes into the world as a questionFor which old answersAre not sufficient…

He turned the presidency – and the President’s House – into something it had not been before: a center of curiosity and inquiry, of vibrant institution that played informal but important roles in the broader...

Just as we may, through an appalled realization that we were unaware of what was going on in the mind of one we thought we knew, come to wonder how we ever know what another...

A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external...

Speaking one day to Monsieur de Buffon, on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on the footing with those...

A simple intuition, a single observation, can open vistas of unimagined potential. Once caught in the web of an idea, the researcher is happily doomed, for the outcome is always uncertain, and the resolution of...

As a writer of philosophy, it’s good to ask oneself, ‘Will I still believe this a week from now, or months, or even years?

Writing seems to free them (students) of the idea that math is a collection of right answers own by the teacher – a body of knowledge that she will dispense in chunks and that they...

To say that the humanities can be a path to truth itself is to challenge one of our most closely held beliefs. We live not only in a scientific world, but also in a scientistic...

Beyond all sciences, philosophies, theologies, and histories, a child’s relentless inquiry is truly all it takes to remind us that we don’t know as much as we think we know.

Jo’s face was a study next day, for the secret rather weighed upon her, and she found it hard not to look mysterious and important. Meg observed it, but did not troubled herself to make...

The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is...

There was yet another disadvantage attaching to the whole of Newton’s physical inquiries, … the want of an appropriate notation for expressing the conditions of a dynamical problem, and the general principles by which its...

…You know something, don’t you?””I know lots of things–your inquiry needs to be more specific.””Just answer the question.””True/false or multiple choice?

In an honest effort to gain understanding, asking questions do not, necessarily, imply a conclusion has been determined. They can be used to avoid making the wrong judgement. If building trust is the ultimate goal...

If you only would!” He added rather diffidently: “If you would not mind remembering that I am a military court of inquiry. It makes it easier for me to report to the general if you...

4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion… shake off all the fears &...

The atheist, agnostic, or secularist … should guard against the encroachment of religion in areas where it has no place, and in particular the control of education by religious authority. The attempts to ban the...

If you tell somebody something, you’ve forever robbed them of the opportunity to discover it for themselves.

Every great man is an idol, an oracle of inquiry. Don’t aspire to know the former, but aspire to know the diety in his soul.

In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion...

When scientific conversations cease, then dogma rather than knowledge begins to rule the day.

Truths are as much a matter of questions as answers.

good judges of how the deity would behave,” then such an unknown and unpredictable deity cannot provide good explanatory grounds for any phenomenon. The problem with the ‘minimal view’ is that in trying to be...

Religion, by its very nature as an untestable belief in undetectable beings and an unknowable afterlife, disables our reality checks. It ends the conversation. It cuts off inquiry: not only factual inquiry, but moral inquiry....

There is no way to help a learner to be disciplined, active, and thoroughly engaged unless he perceives a problem to be a problem or whatever is to-be-learned as worth learning, and unless he plays...