Answers Quotes - Page 34

Truly, that reason upon which we plume ourselves, though it may answer for little things, yet for great decisions is hardly surer than a toss up.

I believe the old cliché, 'God helps those who help themselves,' is not only misleading but often dead wrong. My most spectacular answers to prayers have come when I was so helpless, so out of control as to be able to do nothing at all for myself.

When we're not defending and justifying, and we're being very still, our answers can and do shock us.

The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.

When I was 19, I was in a horrific car accident, and it taught me that at the end of our life, we ask all these questions. And my questions, I discovered, were: Did I really live my life? Did I love? Did I matter? And I was unhappy with the answers.

The concept of loyalty is a very strange concept. When loyalty is to be tested, the real answer is that may it never be.

And of course, the answer came to me in the same way Jesus comes to those who drink in trailers: as an epiphany.

Just when I nearly had the answer, I forgot the question.

Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life.

The answer to deep anxiety is the deep adoration of God.

If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is.

Test pilots have a litmus test for evaluating problems. When something goes wrong, they ask, "Is this thing still flying?" If the answer is yes, then there's no immediate danger, no need to overreact.

Never answer an anonymous letter.

If your prayer is selfish, the answer will be something that will rebuke your selfishness. You may not recognize it as having come at all, but it is sure to be there.

As I unclutter my life, I free myself to answer the callings of my soul.

What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?

People often ask how I got interested in the brain; my rhetorical answer is: 'How can anyone NOT be interested in it?' Everything you call 'human nature' and consciousness arises from it.

What I don't know is whether there is a way politically that you can beat away these, some of these populist movements because in the end I don't think they really do provide answers. They ride the anger. But they don't really have the answers. Or whether this is an experiment we're just going to have to go through first.

Sometimes, the best answer is a more interesting question.

The answer is to say 'No!' to authority when authority is wrong.

In mathematics, our freedom lies in the questions we ask — and in how we pursue them — but not in the answers awaiting us.

Who is Jesus? The answer to that question is a matter of eternal life and eternal death.

There are still so many questions to answer. When you look at any part of the universe, you have to feel humbled.

Unfortunately, failure enjoys a natural advantage. Wrong answers to any problem outnumber right ones by a wide margin, and it seems that it will always be easier to break things than to fix them.

Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I", every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you’ll have to swallow the world.