Quotes About Curiosity

One of Steve Wozniak's first memories was going to his father's workplace on a weekend and being shown electronic parts, with his dad "putting them on a table with me so I got to play with them.

Other than a little training in commercial math at what was known as an "abacus school," Leonardo was mainly self-taught. He often seemed defensive about being an "unlettered man," as he dubbed himself with some irony. But he also took pride that his lack of formal schooling led him to be a disciple of experience and experiment.

We all see nature's wonders every day, whether it be a plant that moves or a sunset that reaches with pink fingers into a sky of deep blue. The key to true curiosity is pausing to ponder the causes. What makes a sky blue or a sunset pink or a leaf of sleeping grass curl?

playing juvenile pranks. In twelfth grade he built an electronic metronome—one of those tick-tick-tick devices that keep time in music class—and realized it sounded like a bomb. So he took the labels off some big batteries, taped them together, and put it in a school locker; he rigged

the key to innovation is connecting a curiosity about basic science to the practical work of devising tools that can be applied to our lives—moving discoveries from lab bench to bedside.

said. But his father again bent to his will. "He wanted me to promise that I'd never use pot again, but I wouldn't promise." In fact by his senior year he was also dabbling in LSD and hash as well as exploring the mind-bending effects of sleep deprivation. "I

Walter Isaacson

Mystery to Leonardo was a shadow, a smile and a finger pointing into darkness.

Walter Isaacson

Jobs later said that he never read the novel. "I heard it was about me," he told me, "and if it was about me, I would have gotten really pissed off, and I didn't want to get pissed at my sister, so I didn't read

market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.

Leonardo was not content merely to measure every aspect of every body part. In addition, he felt compelled to record what occurs when each of these parts moves.

He also flowered intellectually during his last two years in high school and found himself at the intersection, as he had begun to see it, of those who were geekily immersed

The best way to approach his life is the way he approached the world: filled with a sense of curiosity and an appreciation for its infinite wonders.

We are witnessing the physical and mental response, including amazement and reverence and curiosity, to an epiphany. Only the Virgin seems still, the calm in the vortex. Portraying the swirl of characters was a daunting task, perhaps too much so. Each had to have a unique pose and set of emotions. As Leonardo later wrote in his notebook, "Do not repeat the same movements in the same figure, be it limbs, hands or fingers, nor should the same pose be repeated in one narrative painting.

But even when he was engaged in blue-sky thinking, his science was not a separate endeavor from his art. Together they served his driving passion, which was nothing less than knowing everything there was to know about the world, including how we fit into it. He had a reverence for the wholeness of nature and a feel for the harmony of its patterns, which he saw replicated in phenomena large and small.

Retain a childlike sense of wonder. At a certain point in life, most of us quit puzzling over everyday phenomena. We might savor the beauty of a blue sky, but we no longer bother to wonder why it is that color. Leonardo did. So did Einstein, who wrote to another friend, "You and I never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born."5 We should be careful to never outgrow our wonder years, or to let our children do so.

What made Leonardo a genius, what set him apart from people who are merely extraordinarily smart, was creativity, the ability to apply imagination to intellect.

Leonardo fell into that category. He was born out of wedlock, gay, left-handed, a vegetarian, and was easily distracted, and that helped instill a sense of wonder at how he fit into this world.

Leonardo's interest in machinery was linked to his fascination with motion.

He was still Leonardo, always pursuing a curiosity, less passionate about tying up loose ends.

As the New Yorker art critic Adam Gopnik once wrote, "Leonardo remains weird, matchlessly weird, and nothing to be done about it."11

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful.

Even before Jobs started elementary school, his mother had taught him how to read. This, however, led to some problems once he got to school. "I was kind of bored for the first few years, so I occupied myself by getting into trouble." It also soon became clear that Jobs, by both nature and nurture, was not disposed to accept authority.