quotations 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.
SAUL D. ALINSKY
Rules for Radicals
The love of variety, or curiosity of seeing new things, seems wove into the frame of every son and daughter of Adam; we usually speak of it as one of nature's levities, though planted within us for the solid purpose of carrying forward the mind to fresh inquiry and knowledge; strip us of it, the mind would doze forever over the present page; and we should all of us rest at ease with such objects as presented themselves in the parish or province where we first drew breath.
JOHN EPPS
Horae Phrenologicae
Curiosity is one of our more primal appetites. It may at time go out of fashion, but it always commands respect. Timeless as well as artless in its enticement, it has stirred men since mankind's more hirsute, sniffingly inquisitive days. Certainly it is the prerequisite of knowledge, if not that rarer quality of wisdom itself.
KARL A. BRUNSTEIN
Beyond the Four Dimensions
Nothing whets the intelligence more than a passionate suspicion, nothing develops all the faculties of an immature mind more than a trail running away into the dark.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Burning Secret and Other Stories
Curiosity is a call from knowledge.
TOBA BETA
My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Inquire not too curiously.
MUHAMMAD
The Quran
Curiosity is a result of cognitive conflict or a gap in knowledge that is elicited by the stimuli or situation. For example, children are most curious when they see an outcome of an event that is inconsistent with their expectations.
DAVID KLAHR, BRYAN MATLEN & JAMIE JIROUT
"Children as Scientific Thinkers,", Handbook of the Psychology of Science
There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite hundreds of pop lyrics and reel off any amount of information about footballers. Why? Because they are interested in those things. They are curious. If you are hungry for food, you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same. Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history. You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.
STEPHEN FRY
The Fry Chronicles
We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
PLINY THE YOUNGER
Epistles
The curiosity of man must forever find its greatest challenge in the magnificent riddle of the universe.
HEINZ HABER
Stars, Men and Atoms
Curiosity is the aspect of the universe seeking to realize itself, and the fruit of such activity is new reality, stimulating new research.
CASSIUS JACKSON KEYSER
The Human Worth of Rigorous Thinking
He that enlarges his curiosity after the works of nature, demonstrably multiplies the inlets to happiness.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Rambler, April 3, 1750
Youth's insatiable curiosity is soon squelched and its breadth of view quickly forced into the furrow cut by the plow of convention.
DALE REX COMAN
The Endless Adventure
Curiosity is scandal's microscope.
P. FLETCHER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into.
WENDELL BERRY
attributed, The Miss Dennis School of Writing
If curiosities were abundant they would not be curiosities.
W. STUKELEY
attributed, Day's Collacon
Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
"Ode on a Chair Made of Sir Francis Drake's Ship"
Curiosity responsible for cat needing nine lives.
CHARLIE CHAN
Charlie Chan at the Circus
Me and my insatiable curiosity. If there's any justice in the world, I was a very good cat in a past life.
RHI ETZWEILER
Blacker than Black
Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, Meet the Robinsons