Quotes About Inquisitiveness

to me, the hallmark of the modern mind is that it loves to wander from its subject) I

To me, the hallmark of the modern mind is that it loves to wander from its subject.

I was fascinated by strangers, wanted to know what food they ate and what dishes they ate it from, what movies they watched and what music they listened to, wanted to look under their beds and in their secret drawers and night tables and inside the pockets of their coats. Often I saw interesting-looking people on the street and thought about them restlessly for days, imagining their lives, making up stories about them on the subway or the crosstown bus.

It may be that the strongest instinct of the human race, stronger than sex or hunger, is curiosity: the absolute need to know. It can and often does motivate a lifetime, it kills more than cats, and the prospect of satisfying it can be the most exciting of emotions.

Another thing I've been trying to do on my walks is to know what I'm looking at, when I'm looking at it. I want to be smart. When I walk down the sidewalk I see about a hundred different kinds of bugs and all I do is point at them like a caveman and say 'Ugh, look, a bug,' but I know each one of them must have a different name and a different reason why and how it came to be on the planet, and I don't know any of that stuff.

We don't know all the answers. If we knew all the answers we'd be bored, wouldn't we? We keep looking, searching, trying to get more knowledge.

I love learning new things that will never be put to practical use.

Only children entertain the fantasy that adults know how and why everything works. Being an adult is accepting the not knowing.

And my difficulties were these: I found each plant, each new turn in the road, each new turn in the weather, from cold to hot and then back again, each new set of boulders so absorbing, so new, and the newness so absorbing, and I was so in need of an explanation for each thing, that I was often in tears, troubling myself with questions, such as what am I and what is the thing in front of me.

Wonder, as a quality of intellect, has fallen from favor.

Lily asked, "What do you mean when you say Number One's eyes were different?" "Like a cat's eyes. You know what a cat's eyes look like?" "No," said Katie. "Because my cat is so completely lazy I've never seen her eyes actually open." "Which?" said Lily. "Trish?" "She didn't move for a week. Dad thought she was dead. We were about to bury her when someone noticed the chicken was missing from the counter.

What's on the high side?" Koane asked.

There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.

Nature answers only when she is questioned.

Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

It can be of no practical use to know that Pi is irrational, but if we can know, it surely would be intolerable not to know.

He who has no inclination to learn more will be very apt to think that he knows enough.

Schooling, instead of encouraging the asking of questions, too often discourages it.

Creatures whose main spring is curiosity will enjoy the accumulating of fact far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts.

A good education should leave much to be desired.

'Whom are you?' he asked for he had been to night school.

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

To be a kid is to be invisible and to listen, and to interpret things that aren't necessarily meant for you to hear--because how else do you find out about the world?

He likes to know things. He checks out book and record collections when he visits people, looks in medicine cabinets, takes inventory in refrigerators. He eaves drops on conversations at public phone booths. He reads murder victims' mail.