Virgil Thomson Quotes

Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?

I'm just quizzical about how things work and why things are.

You gotta ask 'why' questions. 'Why did you do this?' A 'why' question you can't answer with one word.

When you take something apart, you get a great sense of what it took to originally put it together.

People have to find ways of explaining the work.

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.

Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'

I was always tearing stuff apart to see how it worked.

There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

I am one of the people who love the why of things.

Happy is the one who knows the causes of things.

My favorite question is 'Why?' I think it can be really helpful - I also think it can be annoying to people at times; I'll admit that. But I really do try to understand why are we approaching it this way, does it makes sense, is this the right answer, why is it the right answer, are there other paths to getting there, could those be better.

Always ask questions.

There's a lot you can learn about something by taking it apart.

Science is not the means by which we come to understand why physical laws and circumstances are the way they are. When we ask why - assuming the question is really 'why' and not 'how' - we are really asking to know the motive of some responsible agent capable of reason.

I'm just super nosy, I love trying to understand what's going on.

To know truly is to know by causes.

You could know the what of something forever and never discover the why.

I'm fascinated by the logic that leads to something.

... strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly seached out.

We do not know a truth without knowing its cause.

I begin by considering an effect.

The novelist wants to know how things will turn out; the historian already knows how things turned out, but wants to know why they turned out the way they did.

You can think deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into a subject, depending on what you are writing about.

I like deconstructing things. I like cutting the legs out from under something that feels secret.