Questioning Norms Quotes

I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself.

I'm plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.

I believe rules are meant to be broken.

I'm about challenging people. Like, properly challenging them and their assumptions.

The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.

Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are.

You could say I'm a mod, but with a small 'm'; I don't wear a parka, but I do question what I wear and what I listen to, which is what it's all about.

There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'" "The mood will pass, sir.

Noting that Huckleberry Finn was originally both valued and reviled because it shows the reader that the accepted moral code and social hierarchy is not always correct.

What gets called 'the sixties' left a mixed legacy and a lot of divides. But it opened everything to question, and what seems the most fundamental and most pervasive in all the ensuing changes is the loss of faith in authority: the authority of government, of science, of patriarchy, of progress, of capitalism, of violence, of whiteness.

Getting to a place where I am comfortable saying things was hard-earned for me. I've chewed on the ground glass of my own experience. I saw Gloria Steinem speak, and I was just like, Shut the front door. She was saying that she didn't come into her own until her 40s, and she was asking herself the question, Why should she have to get married? And I just thank God someone asked that question, right? I think we're the first generation of women asking ourselves certain questions and deciding for ourselves.

No humorist is under any obligation to provide answers and probably if you were to delve into the literary history of humour it's probably all about not providing answers because the humorist essentially says: this is the way things are.

Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn't it, of a long line of proven criminals?

"Spirituality comes from questioning everything but at the same time accepting everything. You can even be spiritual watching TV. When the ad comes on and says, "Don't hate me because I am beautiful," question that."

People all over the world are today questioning matters that only a few generations ago were generally seen as "just the way things are.”

The role of the comedian is to say 'Wait a minute' when a consensus starts to form.

To ask the hard question is simple.

Disability doesn't make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does.

I've never wanted to be part of an inner circle of any scene. I've always been an outsider looking to question and subvert.

I try and take everyone's ideals, common morals, flip them around, make people look at them differently, question them, so that you're not always taking things for granted.

I mean it as a compliment when I say that you could almost define a philosopher as someone who won't take common sense for an answer.

Anything can be misinterpreted. People can look at Christ on a cross and think, This is an image of murder, this is violent, this has sexual imagery in it. And it just - I think it's my job as an artist to be out there pushing people's buttons and making them question everything.

Question everything generally thought to be obvious.

I think in part the reason is that seeing an economy that is, in many ways, quite different from the one grows up in, helps crystallize issues: in one's own environment, one takes too much for granted, without asking why things are the way they are.

The despotism of custom is on the wane. We are not content to know that things are; we ask whether they ought to be.