Sermon quotes on questions
African Proverb
The one who asks questions doesn’t lose his way.
Francis Bacon
A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.
Bernard Baruch
Millions saw the apple fall but Newton was the one who asked why.
“New York Post” Newspaper, June 24, 1965.
Napoleon Bonaparte
“Why” and “”how”” are words so important that they cannot be too often used.
Clay Christensen
Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question—you have to want to know—in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.
Conversation with Jason Fried
Danish Proverb
One who is afraid of asking questions is ashamed of learning.
Peter Drucker
My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.
T.S. Eliot
“When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city ?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?
Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.”
The Rock
Robert Half
Asking the right questions takes as much skill as giving the right answers.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.
Quoted in Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, SQ: Connecting with Our Spiritual Intelligence, 2000.
Edward Hodnett
If you do not ask the right questions, you do not get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer.
Michael Hyatt
Asking questions is one of the best ways to grow as a human being.
This Is Your Life Podcast, slideblast.com. December 31, 2014.
Madeleine L’Engle
An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.”
A Circle of Quiet
Ursula K Le Guin
There are no right answers to wrong questions.
Malcolm Forbes
One who never asks either knows everything or nothing.
C.S. Lewis
When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
I would like to beg you… as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday, far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Letters to a Young Poet, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Modern Library, 2001)
John Ruskin
To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.
Francis Schaeffer
The ancients were afraid that if they went to the end of the earth they would fall off and be consumed by dragons. But once we understand that Christianity is true to what is there, true to the ultimate environment – the infinite, personal God who is really there – then our minds are freed. We can pursue any question and can be sure that we will not fall off the end of the earth.”
Art & the Bible
Source Unknown
Knowledge is having the right answer. Intelligence is asking the right question.
Andy Stanley
Good questions lead to better decisions. And better decisions lead to fewer regrets.
Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets: 5 Questions to Help You Determine Your Next Move, Zondervan, 2020.
Carroll Stuhlmueller
Silently lost in adoration within the dust before God is preparation for the ultimate answer to all questions: one’s becoming a new creature in Christ Jesus.
The Spirituality of the Psalms (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002)
Brian Tracy
A major stimulant to creative thinking is focused questions.
Voltaire
Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
Thomas J. Watson
The ability to ask the right question is more than half the battle of finding the answer.
Still Looking for inspiration?
Consider checking out our illustrations page on Questions.