278 Curiosity Quotes

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.

The first thing I did in the studio was to want to tear that camera to pieces. I had to know how that film got into the cutting room, what you did to it in there, how you projected it, how you finally got the picture together, how you made things match. The technical part of pictures is what interested me. Material was the last thing in the world I thought about. You only had to turn me loose on the set and I'd have material in two minutes, because I'd been doing it all my life.

Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question.

In order to read one must sit down, usually indoors. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I've never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living.

What merit there is in my thinking is derived from two peculiarities: (1) My inability to be familiar with anything. I simply can't take things for granted. (2) My endless patience. I assume that the only way to find an answer is to hang on long enough and keep groping.

Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.

The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

I hope we get to the bottom of the answer. It's what I'm interested to know.

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.

There are dons who care for the intellect and the imagination, and there are priests who care for the spirit; but broadly speaking the function of universities and churches alike is to trim and tame enthusiasm, to suppress curiosity, and, in short, to whittle immortal souls into serviceable props of the established order.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality. I was curious to see what would happen. That's all it was: curiosity.

Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.

Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.

Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe. The painter's art is more confined, and has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this power and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is totally engaged. What is done by Painting, must be done at one blow; curiosity has received at once all the satisfaction it can ever have.

Life consists in penetrating the unknown, and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowledge thus acquired.

I have always wanted to know as much as possible about the world.

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

Secrets of the cosmos will begin to unravel. I, for one, can't wait.

Some on commission, some for the love of learning, Some because they have nothing better to do Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden The drumming of the demon in their ears.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

(To caller with Southern accent) Let me ask you something, how are things up there in Cold Mountain?

If you only knew you would climb up on it....

How does he do that?

I like to watch.

Sometimes I wonder what goes on inside her mind

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

Philosophy begins with wonder.

People say to me, 'Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?' No, I'm not... If it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it - that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers... then that's the way it is. But either way there's Nature and she's going to come out the way She is. So therefore when we go to investigate we shouldn't predecide what it is we're looking for only to find out more about it. Now you ask: 'Why do you try to find out more about it?' If you began your investigation to get an answer to some deep philosophical question, you may be wrong. It may be that you can't get an answer to that particular question just by finding out more about the character of Nature. But that's not my interest in science; my interest in science is to simply find out about the world and the more I find out the better it is, I like to find out...

I like to inquire into everything. Hercule Poirot is a good dog. The good dog follows the scent, and if, regrettably, there is no scent to follow, he noses around - seeking always something that is not very nice.

Dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure. The universe is vast.

The present age delights in unearthing a great man's secrets; for one thing because we like to temper our admiration and also perhaps we have a vague hope of finding a clue to genius in such 'revelations.'

I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about..

I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.

'Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.'

That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a safe one to go on; borne out as it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself famous .... Photography ... offers the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity.

I think that science would never have achieved much progress if it had always imagined unknown obstacles hidden round every corner. At least we may peer gingerly round the corner, and perhaps we shall find there is nothing very formidable after all.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

Amusement to an observing mind is study.

All is mystery; but he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the dark veil.

She said to her, 'Grandmother, what great arms you have!' 'That's to embrace you the better, my child.' 'Grandmother, what great legs you have!' 'That's to run the better, my child.' 'Grandmother, what great ears you have!' 'That's to hear the better, my child.' 'Grandmother, what great teeth you have!' 'That's for to eat you.' And upon saying these words, this naughty Wolf threw himself upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Scrape. Feel. Dig. Believe. Ask.

I was wondering what electrons are actually doing when they sit in your hard drive in an old laptop at the back of your closet. I mean, how does an electron sit still - is it like a cartoon M&M learning back in a folding beach chair? Is it like an angry little steel ball bearing hovering there, just waiting to go nuts on protons? What's the mechanism that starts and stops the electron? Who's its dungeon master?

On the fifteenth of May, in the Jungle of Nool, In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool, He was splashing... enjoying the jungle's great joys... When Horton the elephant heard a small noise.

In the places I go there are things that I see That I never could spell if I stopped with the Z. I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends. My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!

From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.

Young cat! If you keep Your eyes open enough, Oh, the stuff you will learn! The most wonderful stuff!

Roaming through the jungle of 'oohs' and 'ahs,' searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.

To man, that was in th' evening made, Stars gave the first delight; Admiring, in the gloomy shade, Those little drops of light.

When I was a kid my parents used to tell me, 'Emo, don't go near the cellar door!' One day when they were away, I went to the door and opened it... and I saw birds and trees...

I thought that it was strange to assume that it was abnormal for anyone to be forever asking questions about the nature of the universe, about what the human condition really was, my condition, what I was doing here, if there was really something to do. It seemed to me on the contrary that it was abnormal for people not to think about it, for them to allow themselves to live, as it were, unconsciously. Perhaps it's because everyone, all the others, are convinced in some unformulated, irrational way that one day everything will be made clear. Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for humanity. Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for me.

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.

Real education must ultimately be limited to one who INSISTS on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.

My curiosity sister of larks.

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.

There are few things more exciting to me, in short, than a psychological reason.

But let a man know that there are things to be known, of which he is ignorant, and it is so much carved out of his domain of universal knowledge.

A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering cold iron.

Jack: What kind of tiger is that - Siberian or Bengal?

It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers.

We seek to know the moving of each sphere, And the strange cause of th' ebbs and floods of Nile; But of that clock within our breasts we bear, The subtle motions we forget the while.

When I was a kid, I was just like any other boy. Boys are very curious, they like to push the walls, you know? (1988)

I'm interested in all religion. (2004)

If I am to be remembered, I hope it will not be primarily for my specialized scientific work, but as a generalist; one to whom, enlarging Terence's words, nothing human and nothing in external nature was alien.

The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.

When issues of events like these my father is waiting for, are hanging in the scales of fate, the mind has the advantage of changing the principle of expectation three times, without which it would not have power to see it out. Curiosity governs the first moment; and the second moment is all economy to justify the expense of the first - and for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth moments, and so on to the day of judgment - 'tis a point of HONOUR. I need not be told, that the ethic writers have assigned this all to Patience; but that VIRTUE, methinks, has extent of domination sufficient of her own, and enough to do in it, without invading the few dismantled castles which HONOUR has left him upon the earth.

What if I had to Live here without you Oh, I don't really want to know Where you goin', Lenny Cohen?

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again. (p. 5e)

By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analysing the observations that I have made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics, Although I am absolutely without training in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists.

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.

Between two evils, I generally like to pick the one I never tried before.

My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.

Remain in wonder if you want mysteries to open up for you. Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. Questioners sooner or later end up in a library. They end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers. And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder.

'Oh, look,' she said. She was a confirmed Oh-looker. I had noticed this at Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on various occasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provencal filling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a man selling coloured spectacles, the deep velvet blue of the Mediterranean, and the late mayor of New York in a striped one-piece bathing suit.

I don't know if you have ever seen a tiger of the jungle drawing a deep breath preparatory to doing a swan dive and landing with both the feet on the backbone of one of the minor fauna. Probably not, nor, as a matter of fact, have I.

I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment. But if you snuff out that spark of learning, it is the cruelest and most shortsighted thing a nation can do. Too many children see that spark of learning snuffed out.

I'm fascinated by everything. There's just too much going on in too many places that I just daren't miss.

So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.

The popularity of the paranormal, oddly enough, might even be grounds for encouragement. I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we do not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite which drives the best of true science, and it is an appetite which true science is best qualified to satisfy.

The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear. It is an immensely exciting experience to be born in the world, born in the universe, and look around you and realise that before you die you have the opportunity of understanding an immense amount about that world and about that universe and about life and about why we're here. We have the opportunity of understanding far, far more than any of our predecessors ever. That is such an exciting possibility, it would be such a shame to blow it and end your life not having understood what there is to understand.