Quotes About Curiosity

Carl Sagan was proud to be agnostic when asked whether there was life elsewhere in the universe. When he refused to commit himself, his interlocutor pressed him for a 'gut feeling' and he immortally replied: 'But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.

If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural. As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful.

The most beautiful thing we can experience,' he said, 'is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

One of the great virtues of science is that scientists know when they don't know the answer to something. They cheerfully admit that they don't know. Cheerfully, because not knowing the answer is an exciting challenge to try to find it.

others to disagree with you. Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others. Question everything.

Such work would never be done if scientists were satisfied with a lazy default such as 'intelligent design theory

Uno de los verdaderamente nefastos efectos de la religión es que nos inculca como virtud el estar satisfechos con el desconocimiento.

Unweaving the Rainbow

uno de los efectos auténticamente perniciosos de la religión es que enseña que estar satisfecho con el desconocimiento es una virtud.

There is mystery but never magic, and mysteries are all the more beautiful for being eventually explained. Things are explicable and it is our privilege to explain them.

you could almost define a philosopher as someone who won't take common sense for an answer.

Don't squander precious ignorance by researching it away.

To say that something happened supernaturally is not just to say 'we don't understand it' but to say ' we will never understand it, so don't even try.

As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful.

Curiously, peace-time appeals for individuals to make some small sacrifice in the rate at which they increase their standard of living seem to be less effective than war-time appeals for individuals to lay down their lives.) Recently

St Augustine said it quite openly: 'There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn' (quoted in Freeman 2002).

My passion is for scientific truth. I don't much care about good and evil. … I care about what's true.

mostly science is, for me, a source of living joy

Most scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that drives them on.

It is the joy of true education: of reading for the sake of a wonderful book rather than for an exam; of following up a subject because it is fascinating rather than because it is on a syllabus; of watching a great teacher's eyes light up for sheer love of the subject.

Have lucky stars swum into Uranus?

The mystic is content to bask in the wonder and revel in a mystery that we were not 'meant' to understand. The scientist feels the same wonder but is restless, not content; recognizes the mystery as profound, then adds, 'But we're working on it.

We are liberated by calculation and reason to visit regions of possibility that had once seemed out of bound or inhabited by dragons.

Um dos efeitos verdadeiramente ruins da religião é que ela nos ensina que é uma virtude estar satisfeito em não compreender.