The practice of deep listening is the practice of open inquiry, without assumption or judgement.

— Sharon Weil

There is no way to help a learner to be disciplined, active, and thoroughly engaged unless he perceives a problem to be a problem or whatever is to-be-learned as worth learning, and unless he plays an active role in determining the process of solution.

— Neil Postman

...[T]here people... are my dangerous accusers because those who hear them suppose that anyone who inquires into such matters... theories about the heavens... and everything below the earth... must be an atheist.

— Socrates

There was yet another disadvantage attaching to the whole of Newton’s physical inquiries, ... the want of an appropriate notation for expressing the conditions of a dynamical problem, and the general principles by which its solution must be obtained. By the labors of LaGrange, the motions of a disturbed planet are reduced with all their complication and variety to a purely mathematical question. It then ceases to be a physical problem; the disturbed and disturbing planet are alike vanished: the ideas of time and force are at an end; the very elements of the orbit have disappeared, or only exist as arbitrary characters in a mathematical formula.

— George Boole

The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty damn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.

— Richard Feynman

Truths are as much a matter of questions as answers.

— Ozzie Zehner

TSE-kung wished to dispense with the sacrifice of a sheep for the New Moon ceremony. The Master said, "You love the sheep; I love the ceremony.

— Confucius

Unless the inquiry has been so exhaustive as to explore every possibility, the lack of evidence should never be used to ground a statement of fact. Unlikelihood certainly, but no more. A prematurely assumed fact blocks further inquiry.

— Jonathan Renshaw

When scientific conversations cease, then dogma rather than knowledge begins to rule the day.

— Jaak Panksepp

Who am I? The great inquiry indeed.

— Yogananda Paramhansa