Finding the Art in Everything


18 October, 2007

Questions

I came across this quotation in what I have been reading:

"We have no more questions left to ask. We have looked for questions in the darkest corners and wildest peaks. We have found all the questions that can be found. It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers."

G.K. Chesterton--"The Suicide of Thought"

I find suspect the integral worth of isolated questions--even questions that connect to other questions. It seems practical to me that questions are only worth as much as they point you to new truth in the answer. This contentedness with "the question" seems a complacency with incompleteness. It is only half the thing: a road with no destination. And don't we question because we crave the completeness an answer can bring? I accept the possibility of the cannot-be-knowns, and that some questions cannot be answered. But that is no reason for surrendering seeking to answer them. What is the worth of questions that are not driven by the search for truth?

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