Quotes About Curiosity

What we want in students is creativity and a willingness to fail. I always say to students, 'If you've never at some point stayed up all night talking to your new boyfriend about the meaning of life instead of preparing for the test, then you're not really an intellectual.'

I think that what most artists are trying to do is trying to understand. I think what distinguishes creative people and/or artists from another type of person is perhaps a willingness to go headlong into that uncertainty.

I enjoy it; my experiences abroad have taught me the importance of an open mind and have given me a willingness to wander off the beaten path - not only to keep life interesting, but also to understand in a meaningful way that things do not look the same from every vantage point.

I read my first book on Woodrow Wilson at age 15, and I was hooked.

I've always been interested, since graduate school, in why some children wilt and shrink back from challenges and give up in the face of obstacles, while others avidly seek challenges and become even more invested in the face of obstacles. So this has been my primary question for over 40 years.

You need to be curious, competitive, creative, stubborn, self-confident, skeptical, patient and be lucky to win a Nobel.

Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about 'Wind in the Willows' and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought - you know about 'The Wind in the Willows.'

Most people don't know where their food comes from. We're confused about the fundamentals. How does our food wind up on our plates? How exactly is it that, when I flick the switch, the lights come on?

When I would hear the rabbi tell about some miracle such as a bush whose leaves were shaking but there wasn't any wind, I would try to fit the miracle into the real world and explain it in terms of natural phenomena.

I'm proud of the fact that I thought of the solar wind. It was an exercise in pursuing curiosity, which is the main motivation for studying physics from a personal standpoint.

What, nephew, said the king, is the wind in that door?

I'm not good at making plans, because I never have been. I never do things with an idea of where they may wind up.

As a child I read all kinds of stuff, whether it was 'Asterix and Obelix' and 'Tin Tin' comic books, or 'Lord of the Rings,' or Frank Herbert's sci-fi. Or 'The Wind in the Willows.' Or 'Charlotte's Web.'

Sometimes, I'm not sure why I wind up doing some of the things I do.

My earliest memory as a kid was when I was about six, my dad used to take me and our Labrador Glen for a walk. We used to take a wind up camera and go searching for crop circles. We'd make little notes and I'd take photos of the circles.

When I was a kid, I used to do my homework in the living room, where there was a picture window. I was hoping that someone would walk by and see me looking very studious in my living room.

You can be watching the greatest film in the world, and if you hear your neighbor getting into a fight, you're at the window.

I've always had this in a kind of worst-case dark imagination. I want to know what the dark form in the window is. I want to know what the noise under the staircase is.

Doubt comes in at the window when inquiry is denied at the door.

Do I have to use my feet? Can I knock the window out with my head?

Steven Adler and I played football in the street when we were 12. I remember rehearsing in my bedroom with my first band, and some kid climbed over the fence of my backyard and peeked his head in the window to see who was rocking. It was Slash.

The advice I was given was just to make sure you look out of the window occasionally. It's something no astronaut ever gets tired of doing.

I was never a lonely child who sat looking at the rain sliding down the window.

I'm really curious about people - what their desires and interests are - and bit.ly's data tell me that. It gives me an unprecedented window into human communication and behavior.