Alan Lightman Quotes

Curiosity is the essence of human existence. 'Who are we? Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?'... I don't know. I don't have any answers to those questions. I don't know what's over there around the corner. But I want to find out.

Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer.

I think it's normal that for a part of your life you have a lot of questions, and you're interested in all possible theories.

It's the questions we ask, the journey we take to get to where we are going that is more important than the actual answer.

So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.

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.

Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going?-are not questions with an answer but questions that open us up to new questions which lead us deeper into the unshakeable mystery of existence.

Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question. Science has no answer to it.

A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.

The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

the essence of philosophy is not the possession of the truth but the search for truth. ... Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.

All our science and philosophy form only an island of knowledge surrounded by an ocean of mystery. The larger the island grows, the longer the shoreline where the known meets the unknown.

Not all questions are answered, but fortunately some answers are questioned.

There will always be more questions. Every answer leads to more questions. The only way to survive is to let some of them go.

The marvelous thing is that for thousands of years people have continued questioning and searching and ultimately concluding that reasons for certain occurrences are not given to man to know.

A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.

What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions.

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.

The scientist … creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity … is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers

In philosophy you're never 100% sure. You're always undermining what you think you know. That's always been my philosophy and my intellectual ethos.

To ask larger questions is to risk getting things wrong. Not to ask them at all is to constrain the life of understanding

I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.

I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything...