„You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.“

„You can tell you’ve found a really interesting question when nobody wants you to answer it.“

—  Daniel Abraham speculative fiction writer from the United States 1969

Origine: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 8 (p. 92)

„That is a very good question. I don't know the answer. But can you tell me the name of a classical Greek shoemaker?“

—  Arthur Miller playwright from the United States 1915 - 2005

His reply to a shoe manufacturer who had asked why Miller's job should be subsidized when his was not, as recounted at a London press conference. The Guardian (25 January 1990)

„Those questions you have? Whether he's the one, whether you feel about him the way you should, or whether the relationship is going okay? When you're not sure whether you're in love with someone or not, the answer is not.“

—  Deb Caletti American writer 1963

Origine: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

„The question is whether you'll tell your children that this decade was the beginning of a new dark age, or whether it was the time of something new and wonderful.“

—  Steve Blank American businessman 1953

Dalhousie University Commencement Speech (2017)

„Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.“

—  Voltaire French writer, historian, and philosopher 1694 - 1778

Il est encore plus facile de juger de l'esprit d'un homme par ses questions que par ses réponses. (It is easier to judge the mind of a man by his questions rather than his answers) — Pierre-Marc-Gaston, duc de Lévis (1764-1830), Maximes et réflexions sur différents sujets de morale et de politique (Paris, 1808): Maxim xviii
Misattributed

„The question of whether Machines Can Think… is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.“

—  Edsger W. Dijkstra Dutch computer scientist 1930 - 2002

Dijkstra (1984) The threats to computing science http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD898.html (EWD898).
1980s

„The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.“

—  Charles Stross, libro Accelerando

Origine: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 1 (“Lobsters”), p. 1 (quoting Edsger W. Dijkstra)

„Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.“

—  Viktor E. Frankl, libro Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)

„Do you always ask me the same questions you ask him?"

"It depends on whether or not I get an answer.“

—  Anne Bishop American fiction writer 1955

Origine: Daughter of the Blood

„We can see that in putting the question "what is man?" what we mean is: what can man become? That is, can man dominate his own destiny, can he "make himself," can he create his own life? We maintain therefore that man is a process and, more exactly, the process of his actions. If you think about it, the question itself "what is man?" is not an abstract or "objective" question. It is born of our reflection about ourselves and about others, and we want to know, in relation to what we have thought and seen, what we are and what we can become; whether we really are, and if so to what extent, "makers of our own selves," of our life and of our destiny. And we want to know this "today," in the given conditions of today, the conditions of our daily life, not of any life or any man“

—  Antonio Gramsci Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist 1891 - 1937

Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971).

„The first one has to do with whether a man knows what he is talking about, whether what he says has some basis or not. And my trick that I use is very easy. If you ask him intelligent questions — that is, penetrating, interested, honest, frank, direct questions on the subject, and no trick questions — then he quickly gets stuck. It is like a child asking naive questions. If you ask naive but relevant questions, then almost immediately the person doesn't know the answer, if he is an honest man.“

—  Richard Feynman, libro The Meaning of It All

lecture III: "This Unscientific Age"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

„It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.“

—  Patrick Rothfuss, libro La paura del saggio

Origine: The Wise Man's Fear (2011)

„You must be careful when you ask people whether they’re happy; it’s a question that can upset them a great deal.“

—  François Lelord French writer 1953

„The question was put to him, what hope is; and his answer was, "The dream of a waking man."“

—  Diogenes Laërtius biographer of ancient Greek philosophers 180 - 240

Aristotle, 9.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 5: The Peripatetics

„Why is not the original deposited in some public library, instead of exhibiting attestations of its existence? Suppose there were a question in a court of justice, whether a man be dead or alive. You aver he is alive, and you bring fifty witnesses to swear it. I answer, 'Why do you not produce the man?“

—  James Macpherson Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician 1736 - 1796

Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), p. 487.
Criticism

„I don’t even know what an atheist is. When people ask me if I’m an atheist, I have to ask them what they mean. What is it that I’m supposed to not believe in? Until you can answer that question I can’t tell you whether I’m an atheist, and the question doesn’t arise. […] I don’t see how one can be an agnostic when one doesn’t know what it is that one is supposed to believe in, or reject.“

—  Noam Chomsky american linguist, philosopher and activist 1928

Science in the Dock (2011), 2, Chomsky.info, March 1, 2006, August 16, 2011 http://www.chomsky.info/debates/20060301.htm,
Quotes 2010s, 2011

„What you are is a question only you can answer.“

—  Lois McMaster Bujold, Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)

„In response to a question about what "keeps her up at night", I worry about the fact that in K-12 education I can look at your zip code and tell whether or not you're going to get a good education.“

—  Condoleezza Rice American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist 1954

Interview by Donna Shalala C-Span Video Library No Higher Honor http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/302536-1 University of Miami, School of Business Administration, November 3, 2011.

„But yet he was reputed one of the wise men, that made answer to the question, when a man should marry,—A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.“

—  Francis Bacon English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author 1561 - 1626

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Marriage and Single Life