Quotes About Curiosity

Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest.

If we lacked curiosity, we should do less for the good of our neighbor. But, under the name of duty or pity, curiosity steals into the home of the unhappy and the needy. Perhaps even in the famous mother-love there is a good deal of curiosity.

Curiosity is missing. Curiosity in particular is something that the system, not only the educational system but, the parental... what you do as a parent at home.

You have to have curiosity in life. The moment you don't have any more curiosity, then don't do anything. Retire and stay in your house.

His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.

Curiosity is very important I think, and I think too much of education, starting with childhood education, is either designed to kill curiosity or it works out that way anyway.

I always had a curiosity about Texas. I had a curiosity about small-town life, although, granted, Odessa's not a tiny town.

The less judgment the more curiosity, and the more curiosity the more creativity.

It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others...Being closely observed by a companion can also inhibit our observation of others; then, too, we may become caught up in adjusting ourselves to the companion's questions and remarks, or feel the need to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity.

I have known plenty of people who, in their later years, had the energy of children and the kind of curiosity and fascination with things like little children. I think we can keep that, and I think it's important to keep that part of staying young. But I also think it's great fun growing old.

My father was really good at having me stand on my own two feet, both financially and philosophically. His whole parenting philosophy was to give my brother and me the skills to be grown-ups and the curiosity to ask the right questions.

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

I was addicted to hacking, more for the intellectual challenge, the curiosity, the seduction of adventure; not for stealing, or causing damage or writing computer viruses.

I'm convinced that a controlled disrespect for authority is essential to a scientist. All the good experimental physicists I have known have had an intense curiosity that no Keep Out sign could mute. Physicists do, of course, show a healthy respect for High Voltage, Radiation, and Liquid Hydrogen signs. They are not reckless. I can think of only six who have been killed on the job.

The gloomy recess of an ecclesiastical library is like a harbor, into which a far-traveling curiosity has sailed with its freight, and cast anchor. The ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise. Odors of distant countries and times steal from the red leaves, the swelling ridges of vellum, and the titles in tarnished gold.

We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don't do that.

At every moment you choose yourself. But do you choose *your* self? Body and soul contain a thousand possibilities out of which you can build many I's. But in one of them is there a congruence of the elector and the elected. Only one--which you will never find until you have excluded all those superficial and fleeting possibilities of being and doing with which you toy, out of curiosity or wonder or greed, and which hinder you from casting anchor in the experience of the mystery of life, and the consciousness of the talent entrusted to you which is your *I*.

The process of schooling does not give birth to human beings - as education should but never will so long as it springs from the collective consciousness of our culture - but instead it teaches us to value abstract rewards at the expense of our autonomy, curiosity, interior lives, and time.

What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics.

Curiosity in Rome is a form of courtesy.

There are few things more pathetic than those who have lost their curiosity and sense of adventure, and who no longer care to learn.

Writers are interested in a diverse range of subjects, but prefer to move from field to field to satisfy intellectual curiosity, rather than devote an entire working life to one particular discipline.

Why should the government subsidize intellectual curiosity?

God, we are told, is willing to render himself inconsistent and ridiculous, to confound the curiosity of those whom, we are at the same time informed, he desires to enlighten by his special grace. What must we think of a revelation which, far from teaching us any thing, is calculated to darken and puzzle the clearest ideas?

Curiosity is one of the strongest human incentives

Intelligent machines will continue that mechanization process, taking over the more menial aspects of cognition and elevating our mental lives towards creativity, curiosity, beauty, and joy. These are what truly makes us human.

A book in which there were no lies would be a curiosity.

There are various sorts of curiosity; one is from interest, which makes us desire to know that which may be useful to us; and the other, from pride which comes from the wish to know what others are ignorant of.

There are those who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge; that is curiosity. There are those who seek knowledge to be known by others; that is vanity. There are those who seek knowledge in order to serve; that is Love.

What is the meaning of 'gossip?' Doesn't it originate with sympathy, an interest in one's neighbor, degenerating into idle curiosity and love of tattling? Which is worse, this habit, or keeping one's self so absorbed intellectually as to forget the sufferings and cares of others, to lose sympathy through having too much to think about?

Intellectual curiosity about one's own illness is certainly born of a desire for mastery. If I couldn't cure myself, perhaps I could at least begin to understand myself.

Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.

My interest in wildlife began early and I don't know how early because it's the only thing I've ever been interested in. I've always had a certain curiosity, a certain wonder about the natural world. I like to be outdoors.

All the best essays are epistemological journeys from ignorance or curiosity to knowledge.

My family's been in show business since the 1700s. I traced them. I'm bred to this. Like a racehorse. A thoroughbred. Look at my parents, my God. But it was my curiosity that made me do this. Because you could also say: "Look at Frank Sinatra Jr." It's not like a natural thing that happens. You gotta work.

The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity — a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.

Curiosity is more flexible and practical than belief.

The power of our Muse lies in her meaninglessness. Even the style can turn one into a slave if one does not run away from it, and then one is doomed to repeat oneself. The only thing that counts is curiosity. For me personally, this is what creativity is about. It will express itself less in the fear of doing the same thing over again than in the desire not to go where one has already been.

Bill Clinton was effective because he had that personal relationship, that this was a guy who had tremendous curiosity, which is another one of the key attributes. And he had the ability - his mind was - his mind and his heart were very well-connected. And so he genuinely empathized.

The store of fairy tales, that blue chamber where stories lie waiting to be rediscovered, holds out the promise of just those creative enchantments, not only for its own characters caught in its own plotlines; it offers magical metamorphoses to the one who opens the door, who passes on what was found there, and to those who hear what the storyteller brings. The faculty of wonder, like curiosity can make things happen; it is time for wishful thinking to have its due.

I look upon youth in admiration and admire them for their curiosity about the world, their shape shifting, their ideas about the future.

My Alma mater was books, a good library... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.

We have no clear ideas of the agency of [demonic] spirits, nor is it necessary. The Scripture says little to satisfy our curiosity; but tells us plainly that he is always watching us, and desiring to sift us as wheat. I believe we give him no more than his due, when we charge him with having a hand in all our sins. I believe he cuts us all out abundance of work.

Being a sensitive empath is a beautiful thing as an artist, and it fosters a deep burning curiosity about why we do the things we do.

Learning to explain phenomena such that one continues to be fascinated by the failure of one's explanations creates a continuing cycle of thinking, that is the crux of intelligence. It isn't that one person knows more than another, then. In as sense, it is important to know less than the next person, or at least to be certain of less, thus enabling more curiosity and less explaining away because one has again encountered a well-known phenomenon. The less you know the more you can find out about, and finding out for oneself is what intelligence is all about.

I think of there being two conditions that creative people go through. I think it's fear and curiosity.

Actually, I've never thought myself as being a particularly hard worker. I've always worked, and I guess my mind is busy all the time. I've been in a lot of things just because of my own intellectual curiosity.

Physics is an otherworld thing, it requires a taste for things unseen, even unheard of- a high degree of abstraction... These faculties die off somehow when you grow up... profound curiosity happens when children are young. I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race... Once you are sophisticated, you know too much- far too much. Pauli once said to me, "I know a great deal. I know too much. I am a quantum ancient.".