Humor & Life Quote by James Thurber

Thurber tilts the whole American faith in competence off its axis with a single, politely mischievous comparison. “All of the answers” is the fantasy sold by manuals, experts, and the swaggering certainty of people who’ve never been corrected by reality. It’s also a comic setup: the phrase is so absolute it becomes self-parody. No one has all the answers, and the attempt to sound like they do is exactly the kind of social performance Thurber loved to puncture.

“Some of the questions,” though, is the sneakier flex. He’s not romanticizing ignorance; he’s elevating curiosity as a form of intelligence that survives contact with the world. Questions are portable. Answers age badly, especially in modern life where yesterday’s obvious solution becomes today’s punchline. The line quietly argues that the best minds are the ones willing to live with unresolvedness, to keep their ego small enough to let new information in.

The subtext has bite: certainty is often a cover for insecurity, power, or laziness. If you can claim answers, you can end the conversation, win the room, look authoritative. If you ask good questions, you risk looking uncertain, but you also reopen possibility. For a comedian working in the churn of early-20th-century modernity - mass media, bureaucracies, “experts” multiplying - that’s an ethical position disguised as a quip.

Thurber’s intent is to rehabilitate doubt, not as paralysis, but as a disciplined way of seeing. Knowing which questions matter is a kind of compass; collecting answers can be just clutter.