Responsive paper

You will write a total of seven paragraphs. Write a one-paragraph response to the following pairs of quotations (each paragraph you write responds to two quotes). Your response should include: commentary on the meaning of the quotations (literal or metaphorical); whether or not you agree or disagree with the meaning/idea of the quotations; explanation of how the quotes relate to current events and/or pop culture today. Think about whether or not different aspects of our society and culture follow the advice or beliefs articulated by the quotations. Use specific examples. Identifying common themes that the two quotes share will likely help you form ideas and make observations, but in some case that might be a stretch.   Paragraph 1, Education

1. “To pursue learning is to be a man, to give it up is to become a beast.” -Hsun Tzu
2. “I have no respect for any study whatsoever if its end is the making of money” -Seneca

  Paragraph 2, Human Nature & the Mind

1. “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience. -Locke
2. “Every tool imposes limitations even as it opens possibilities.”  -Carr

Paragraph 3, Language & Rhetoric

1. “What is there greater than the word which persuades the judges in the courts, or the senators in the council, or the citizens in the assembly, or at any other political meeting?”  -Plato
2. “Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; it does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.  -Morrison

  Paragraph 4, Science & Nature

1. “The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings….Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species, man, acquired significant power to alter the natural world.”  -Carson
2. “In the woods around Walden Pond or on the reaches of the Mississippi, most of the information needed to understand the natural world can be gained by personal experience. In the world of nuclear bombs, smog, and foul weather, environmental understanding needs help from the scientist.” -Commoner

  Paragraph 5, Law & Government

1. “Although the prince may be lord and master of his subjects, the subjects nevertheless make the lord and not the lord the subjects. -De Pizan
2. “Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious and that to appear to have them is useful. -Machiavelli

  Paragraph 6, Science & Nature (again)

1. “Education, if it means anything, should not take people away from the land, but instill in them even more respect for it.” -Maathai
2. “Earth Democracy allows us to break free from the global supermarket of commodification and consumerism, which is destroying our food, our farms, our homes, our towns, and our planet.” -Shiva

  Paragraph 7, Wealth, Poverty, & Social Class

1. "Equality is a vital need of the human soul. It consists in the recognition...that the same amount of respect and consideration is due to every human being." -Weil
2. "American inequality didn't just happen. It was created" -Stiglitz

     

Sample Solution