Gordon W. Allport Quotes

An answer is invariably the parent of a whole family of new questions.

The job is to ask questions-it always was-and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.

I've always wanted to answer all the questions that nature posed for us.

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

The essence of scientific genius is to question what the rest of us take for granted.

I know that science is very interested in answers, and I'm just happy with a good question.

If you don't ask the right questions, I can't give you the answers, and if you don't know the right question to ask, you're not ready for the answers

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty.

I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe.

No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.

a question has the most power before we rush to answer it, when it is still making us think, still testing us.

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.

This attitude of mind - this attitude of uncertainty - is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire. It becomes a habit of thought. Once acquired, we cannot retreat from it anymore.

I always say I write because I have lots of questions, not because I have any answers.

The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems.

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.

Questions are not scary. What is scary is when people don’t have any. What is tragic is faith that has no room for them.

The question is just as important as the answer.

The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.

A lot of high-level scientists are in fact people of almost universal interest.

I don't think you want to give all the answers, but I think every answer you do give should bring up another question, and not all questions should be answered.

I love to doubt as well as know.