The statement places higher value on the act of inquiry than on the conclusions it produces. Searching demands attention, doubt and the willingness to revise; possessing an answer requires none of these. On this view, the qualities that make a person capable of understanding are exercised during the search and fall idle once it ends.

There is also a caution about certainty. A truth held as settled tends to stop further questioning, and can harden into dogma even when it began as a discovery. Treating knowledge as provisional keeps it open to correction, which is how understanding is refined over time.

A counterpoint is that inquiry is undertaken precisely in order to arrive somewhere. Findings that are acted upon — in medicine, engineering or law — matter for their reliability, not for the effort of reaching them, and endless searching would leave that work undone.