Rhetorical Questions Quotes

“To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?”
― Christopher Hitchens

“I have a little theory that I'd like to air here, if I may. What is it that you think makes you magicians?" More silence. Fogg was well into rhetorical-question territory now anyway. He spoke more softly. "Is it because you are intelligent? Is it because you are brave and good? Is is because you're special?

Maybe. Who knows. But I'll tell you something: I think you're magicians because you're unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength.

Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“... a rhetorical question. It has a question mark at the end, but you are not meant to answer it because the person who is asking it already knows the answer.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“If my mother's intention in whole or in part was to ensure that I never had to suffer any indignity or embarrassment for being a Jew, then she succeeded well enough. And in any case there were enough intermarriages and 'conversions' on both sides of her line to make me one of those many mischling hybrids who are to be found distributed all over the known world. And, as someone who doesn't really believe that the human species is subdivided by 'race,' let alone that a nation or nationality can be defined by its religion, why should I not let the whole question slide away from me? Why—and then I'll stop asking rhetorical questions—did I at some point resolve that, in whatever tone of voice I was asked 'Are you a Jew?' I would never hear myself deny it?”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Not all of Derrida's writing is to everyone's taste. He had an irritating habit of overusing the rhetorical question, which lends itself easily to parody: 'What is it, to speak? How can I even speak of this? Who is this "I" who speaks of speaking?”
― Terry Eagleton

“What will we care for the why and the wherefore?”
― Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter

“If you have few months to live, what will you do?”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!

“Do you resemble the silent pale-eyed angels
who follow children? Is your face a flower?”
― Sidney Keyes, Sidney Keyes: Collected Poems

“ARE YOU DUPING FOREIGNERS TO COME OVER HERE?”
― Aaron Clarey

“Those who listened to the teachings of Socrates became the best philosophers. But those who studied under Plato, relied more on the rhetorical path and therefore, the greatest opportunists.”
― Mwanandeke Kindembo

“Is it acceptable to wage war in order to bring peace; to murder a bad king in order to replace him with a good one; to oppress in order to liberate; to damn ourselves in the cause of our redemption? Can an objectively bad act be subjectively good; and if so, can there be any objectivity in morality? But if we withdraw our hand and, fearing to transgress, abstain from action and thereby suffer the wrong to be perpetuated, is that not also a misdeed--worse, arguably, since compounded with the sins of prevarication and cowardice?”
― K.J. Parker, Purple and Black