Civilizations rise on curiosity and crumble in silence; the courage to question defines our humanity.
By Abid Hussain Rather
Fyodor Dostoevsky once warned that a time would come when intelligent people would be stopped from thinking and questioning—lest they offend fools. His prophecy feels alarmingly close. For what is foolishness if not the comfort of blind acceptance? Foolishness thrives where questions die. The act of questioning is dangerous to ignorance because it threatens the stability of illusion. To question is to disturb; to disturb is to awaken.
Human civilization itself stands upon the shoulders of questions. Every leap in human progress—scientific, philosophical, or spiritual—began with curiosity. Who am I? Who are you? What are clouds? What is the wind? Why does it blow, and why does it stop? Why does the sun rise in the east? If the Earth spins, then what remains still? Why do some minds think deeper while others remain dull? How can we decide who is sane or insane? If iron is heavier than water, why do ships float?
Each of these questions may once have sounded foolish. Yet, it was such questions that pulled us out of caves, pushed us across oceans, and sent us into space. A question, like silence, is a teacher. It is the father of every answer. The quality of a question determines the quality of human progress; it is the DNA of our intellect. An answer may be ordinary—but a question is never trivial.
Consider Newton’s curiosity when he asked, “Why does an apple fall downward instead of rising upward?” That simple inquiry birthed the law of gravity, altering the course of science forever. Or consider Marx, who asked: if all human blood is the same colour, why do class hierarchies exist? From that question arose an entire philosophy. When Gandhi asked whether non-violence could conquer violence, he set in motion a revolution of conscience that changed history. Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. carried that same question into their own battles, reshaping the moral compass of nations.
The Enlightenment itself was born out of a question: if humans are gifted with reason, how can they be chained by dogma? What happens when they are forbidden to think differently? This single question dismantled monarchies, rewrote laws, and liberated the human mind from centuries of submission.
A question is like water—it nourishes when allowed to flow freely, but stagnates when blocked. The difference between a thriving civilization and a decaying one lies in how it treats questions. Societies that encourage inquiry grow; those that fear it crumble. Look around: states that silence dissent, communities that punish curiosity, and institutions that reward obedience—all stagnate under the weight of their own certainty. In contrast, nations that embrace dialogue, doubt, and debate continue to reinvent themselves.
The real danger lies in the phrases we use to suppress thought: “Without a doubt,” “Certainly,” “That’s impossible,” “I refuse to hear this,” “This is the final verdict.” Each one is a small burial for a potential question. The moment we stop questioning, we stop growing. The day we replace these phrases with “Why?”, “How?”, and “What if?”, the long-stalled wheel of human progress will turn again.
But questioning must come from understanding, not arrogance. A question asked without first listening becomes an argument, not an inquiry. To question is not to defy—it is to seek. A genuine question demands humility, the willingness to be proven wrong. And yet, in many of our classrooms and lecture halls, questioning authority is treated as insolence. Students who dare to ask are silenced or labelled rebellious. Instead of nurturing curiosity, our education systems train children to memorise, repeat, and obey.
This intellectual domestication ensures that generations remain docile—parrots of borrowed wisdom, afraid of independent thought. In the process, we have created societies that can build rockets but cannot tolerate disagreement; that can access infinite information but cannot think freely.
The tragedy of modern education is not that it fails to answer questions—it is that it discourages asking them. The true mark of an educated mind is not the ability to recall, but the courage to question. For only a questioning mind can reform a corrupt system, challenge an unjust authority, or reimagine a broken world. That is precisely why tyrants, kings, and dogmatists fear the question—it is more explosive than any bomb. It shatters control not by force, but by light.
If we can raise a generation unafraid to ask “why,” to doubt respectfully, and to challenge what they inherit, we may yet find a path out of the darkness of conformity. A questioning generation would not only reshape politics or education; it would heal the deep moral and social wounds that silence has allowed to fester.
Let us, then, raise minds that probe rather than conform, voices that ask rather than echo, and generations that challenge rather than obey. For when the question lives—humanity lives.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of this Magazine. The author can be reached at [email protected]
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