"The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change"
About this Quote
The intent isn’t to extract a “right” answer; it’s to make identity feel provisional. “Where were you born?” looks factual, even inert, until you notice how quickly it becomes a story about belonging, class, migration, inheritance, and the accidents that pre-script us. “Where is your home?” is a loaded term in an era of mobility: home can be a place, a person, a language, a lease you can’t afford to renew. Bach’s subtext is that modern life encourages us to outsource these definitions to institutions - passport offices, employers, algorithms - and then live inside whatever label sticks.
The most quietly radical part is the last line: “watch your answers change.” It turns introspection into a longitudinal experiment. Bach doesn’t romanticize self-discovery; he frames it as drift you can measure. In the background is his larger oeuvre, obsessed with flight, freedom, and chosen meaning: your answers will change because you will change, and because the world will keep rearranging what counts as “home” and “going somewhere.” The profundity isn’t in the questions themselves; it’s in recognizing that your automatic answers are often a negotiated settlement between who you are and who you’ve been told to be.
Quote Details
| Topic | Meaning of Life |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Bach, Richard. (2026, January 14). The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-simplest-questions-are-the-most-profound-9942/
Chicago Style
Bach, Richard. "The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change." FixQuotes. January 14, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-simplest-questions-are-the-most-profound-9942/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change." FixQuotes, 14 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-simplest-questions-are-the-most-profound-9942/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.










