Society during the last hundred years has been alternately perplexed and encouraged respecting the two great questions: how shall the criminal and pauper be disposed of in order to reduce crime and reform the criminal on the one hand and, on the other, to diminish pauperism and restore the pauper to useful citizenship?
Questions
There are four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.
History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
Pop music provides not just the soundtrack to our lives, as the cliche goes; it releases our emotions and helps us to articulate them. This is why music is so important to adolescents, who are struggling with questions of identity and self-expression.
In question-and-answer sessions after a reading or during an interview, I forget the question if I’m giving too long an answer. And at the end, I can’t remember any of the questions. The more anxious I am about remembering, the more likely I am to forget.
We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.
The first census in 1790 asked just six questions: the name of the head of the household, the number of free white males older than 16, the number of free white males younger than 16, the number of free white females, the number of other free persons, and the number of slaves.
I believe everything learned in college is an answer to a question that someone has posed. Questions get posed differently and the answers that come back transport us to places we never knew existed.
I grew up in a Jewish family, and we have raised our children in a Jewish tradition. Religion gives a framework for moral enquiry in young minds and points us to questions beyond the material.
All voices are important, and yet it seems that people of color have a lot to say, particularly if you look through the poetry of young people – a lot of questions and a lot of concerns about immigration and security issues, you name it – big questions.