Sublime

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.

At that moment, Phillips exhibited one of the telltale signs of an innovative questioner: a refusal to accept the existing reality.

It is also egalitarian: “You don’t have to hold a position14 of authority to ask a powerful question,” noted LaBarre.

What sets apart the innovative questioners is their ability—mostly born out of persistence and determination—to give form to their ideas and make them real.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Hackett Fischer observed that questions “are the engines of intellect5—cerebral machines that convert curiosity into controlled inquiry.”

The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Hackett Fischer observed that questions “are the engines of intellect5—cerebral machines that convert curiosity into controlled inquiry.”

(McNerney quoted an old John Steinbeck line: “A difficult problem at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”) Similar research exists on

E. E. Cummings, from whom I borrowed this book’s title, wrote, Always the beautiful answer / who asks a more beautiful question.