Carolyn Porco Quotes

The scientist is not much given to talking of the riddle of the universe. "Riddle" is not a scientific term. The conception of a riddle is "something which can he solved." And hence the scientist does not use that popular phrase. We don't know the why of anything. On that matter we are no further advanced than was the cavedweller. The scientist is contented if he can contribute something toward the knowledge of what is and how it is.

To know much is often the cause of doubting more.

If thinking minds, questioning minds, doubting minds, are talking about faith, their whole life will become fake.

Of all the weaknesses little men rail against, there is none that they are more apt to ridicule than the tendency to believe. And of all the signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble head, the tendency of incredulity is the surest. Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.

What if you love knowledge for its own sake, not necessarily as a blueprint to action? What if you wish there were more, not fewer reflective types in the world?

The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.

I say with my own authority that if you go on questioning without accepting anybody's answer, including mine, by and by you will find that the answer is not found but the question disappears.

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

I determine nothing; I do not comprehend things; I suspend judgment; I examine.

I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions.

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views; as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.

Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.

Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.

I would say that I'm 98 percent skeptical, but the other 2 percent [is] open for the possibility of things.

The first beginnings of wisdom...is to ask questions but never to answer any.

Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch?

The faithful witness, like...Socrates, Voltaire, and Swift and Christ himself, is at his best when he is questioning and clarifying and avoiding the specialists obsession with solution. He betrays society when he is silent...He is true to himself and to people when his clarity causes disquiet.

Questioning is the piety of thought.

"Edward, Edward," he said with a patronising smile, "there are no unanswered questions of any relevance. Every question that we need to ask has been answered fully. If you can't find the correct answer then you are obviously asking the wrong question."

Doubting pleases me no less than knowing

Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.

Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.

Science simply cannot adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature.

I can only regard with bewilderment an educated man who is also religious