c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Thinkers aren't limited by what they know, because they can always increase what they know. Rather they're limited by what puzzles them, because there's no way to become curious about something that doesn't puzzle you.
— Daniel Quinn, My Ishmael
The scholar's greatest weakness: calling procrastination research.
— Stephen King, 11/22/63
there is no reason why anyone should understand how it works… and of course no reason why anyone should care … unless you are curious, in which case I love you, for curiosity about the world and all its corners is a beautiful thing.
— Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles
Look!You want to see? See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik's face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like? Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I'm a good-looking fellow, eh?...When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me.She loves me forever! I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!...Look at me! I am Don Juan Triumphant! -Erik in The Phantom of the Opera
— Gaston Leroux
Children, be curious. Nothing is worse (I know it) than when curiosity stops. Nothing is more repressive than the repression of curiosity. Curiosity begets love. It weds us to the world. It's part of our perverse, madcap love for this impossible planet we inhabit. People die when curiosity goes. People have to find out, people have to know.
— Graham Swift, Waterland
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it saved my ass.
— Michael J. Fox
You ask a lot of questions, don't you?" "My brother always says curiosity is my besetting sin.
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.
— René Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
I tried to explain again. 'Perhaps it would have been easier if I said that not being able to find something is like suddenly not remembering the words to your favourite song that you knew off by heart. It's like suddenly forgetting the name of someone you know really well and see every day, or the name of a group who sang a famous song. It's something so frustrating that it plays on your mind over and over again because you know there's an answer but no one can tell you it. It niggles and niggles at me and I can't rest until I know the answer.''I Understand,' he said softly.
— Cecelia Ahern, A Place Called Here
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: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals
Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly. 
— Arnold Edinborough
People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.
— Leo Rosten
Our instinct may be to see the impossibility of tracking everything down as frustrating, dispiriting, perhaps even appalling, but it can just as well be viewed as almost unbearably exciting. We live on a planet that has a more or less infinite capacity to surprise. What reasoning person could possibly want it any other way?
— Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
These are the four that are never content: that have never been filled since the dew began-Jacala's mouth, and the glut of the kite, and the hands of the ape, and the eyes of Man.
— Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books
Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.Linus Pauling
— Linus Pauling
Why? is the boy's motto, why does, why is, why not? Food, weather, time, fires, sea and season, clothes and cars and people; it's all grist to the mill of why.
— Keri Hulme, The Bone People
You will allow that one's curiosity must be aroused when one learns that a lady is prepared to elope to escape from advances one had not the least intention of making!
— Georgette Heyer, Full Moon
Truly, Mallow yearned to know everything. Curiosity was part of her, like her short blond hair and bitten fingernails.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland - For a Little While
There is nothing left of him but curiosity and a pair of eyes.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Mother Night
Socrates told us, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I think he's calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the leading edge.
— Roger Ebert
A sense of curiosity is nature's original school of education.
— Smiley Blanton
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
When you sneak into somebody’s backyard, it does seem that guts and curiosity are working together. Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Guts have to go for the long haul. Curiosity’s like a fun friend you can’t really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it on your own-with whatever guts you can muster.
— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
The days on which one has been the most inquisitive are among the days on which one has been happiest.
— Robert Lynd
Worlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool.
— Mary Catherine Bateson
Eve and the apple was the first great step in experimental science.
— James Bridie
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.
— John Sayles, Los Gusanos: A Novel
No, by God, he had no intention of going on like a blind man, plodding down a path of brainless, fruitless existence until old age or accident took him. Either he found the answer or he ditched the whole mess, life included.
— Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories
Being curious is the most important part of being a journalist. It might be the most important part of being anything.
— Lemony Snicket, When Did You See Her Last?
Curiosity is the hair of our habit tending to stand on end. It rarely happens that our attention is not stained in greater or lesser degree by this animal element.
— Samuel Beckett, Proust
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but paranoia was what tied it up in a sack and buried it in wet concrete.
— Kate Griffin, The Midnight Mayor
Why-why-why!... Ask it of everything your mind touches, and let you mind touch everything!
— Ann Fairbairn
Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It's accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know.
— David McCullough
If we had known everything in this universe, we would have had to find another universe to feed our curiosity, because what keeps alive man is the curiosity!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on. When you consider something like death, after which we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably won’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.
— Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses
Love is curiosity sometimes. Concentrated wondering about the other one.
— Kij Johnson, The Fox Woman
Mermon's tiny black dot eyes managed to widen into larger black dots. "No, no, no, Sir. I was just... curious." "Curiosity is a good thing, like onion soup. But too much onion soup makes you breath smell terrible. and too much curiosity can make your whole body smell terrible, if it causes you to be dead." Veenie nodded carefully; it was a strange threat, but a threat nonetheless.
— Michael Reisman, Simon Bloom, The Gravity Keeper
Latchkey! I mean . . . I want to talk to you . . .'	He fell silent, glancing behind him and shifting from foot to foot, his waterproof trousers rattling like the bulls' bladders that boys use to learn swimming. Sterlingov angrily spat out his cigarette.	'Well? What about?'	'A . . . about a secret matter ,' Alyoshka whispered.	Dozens of ears floated around them in the dust waves; the whisper was heard, and it ran on like a spark along a gunpowder wick. Alyoshka's secret message, the mysterious special clothing, the deacon's catastrophe-all this was too much. The atmosphere was charged with thousands of volts, and something was needed to discharge the electricity, to clear the air. ("X")
— Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories
He wanted AFFIRMATION rather than INFORMATION.
— Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
There is a germ of revolt lying in the spirit of inquiry and critical curiosity.
— André Gide, Isabelle
I told her, "Bring your scriptures, Preach My Gospel, and every question you have. Questions are good. Let's see what the Lord will teach us together."...During one of our study sessions together, as she threw a steady stream of questions at me, I asked her if she was asking questions against a backdrop of faith or one of doubt. "In other words, are you saying, 'Here's something I don't understand, so the gospel must not be true.' or are you willing to say, 'Here's something I don't understand, but I wonder what the Lord or His prophets will teach us about this?'Are your questions asked with the assumption that there are answers? Are you will to trust the Lord and give Him the benefit of the doubt?
— Sheri Dew, Worth the Wrestle
Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true. These intuitive powers were given to your soul at birth.
— Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
The nature of the mind is to acquire, to absorb, is it not? Or rather the pattern it has created for itself is one of gathering in, and in that very activity the mind is preparing its own weariness, boredom. Interst, curiosity, is the beginning of acquisition, wich soon becomes boredom; and the urge to be free from boredom is another form of possession. So the mind goes from boredom to interest to boredom again, til it is utterly weary; and these successive waves of interest and weariness are regarded as existence."Commentaries on Living, Series II
— Jiddhu Krishnamurti
I’m curious about everyone, hungry for everything, greedy for all ideas. My awareness that not everything can be seen, not everything read and not everything thought torments me like the loss of ..... But I don’t see with fixed attention, I don’t read with great care, and I don’t think with continuity. I’m an ardent and inconsequential dilettante in everything. My soul is too weak to sustain the force of its own enthusiasm. Made out of ruins of the unfinished, I’m definable as a landscape of resignations.
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
I didn't want to write a book that advocated for a less curious world. Prurient curiosity may not be great. But curiosity is. People's flaws need to be written about. The flaws of some people lead to horrors inflicted on others. And then there are the more human flaws that, when you shine a light onto them, de-demonize people who might otherwise be seen as ogres.
— Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed
Who now would thrust enquiry on / Beyond necessity of desire?
— Geoffrey Hill, Oraclau/Oracles
I want to say, Christina, that you are ... unusual. And somehow..." her voice trails off. "Your mind-- your curiosity-- will be your comfort.
— Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World
Stop, stop pretty water!"Said Mary one dayTo a frolicsome brookThat was running away."You run on so fast!I wish you would stay;My boat and my flowersYou will carry away.But I will run after:Mother says that I may;For I would know whereYou are running way."So Mary ran on;But I have heard say,That she never could findWhere the brook ran away.
— Eliza Lee Follen
Curiosity is god’s greatest gift to man, but my gift is a little amplified.
— Onaiza Khan, Caged
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
— Dorothy Parker/Ellen Parr
It’s about running wild in a field of exclamation points chasing question marks
— Natasha Tsakos
The world belongs to the people who are curious.
— Einstein
Had a person attempted to taste me so soon after we met, I would have been alarmed; but since Athena was an octopus, I was thrilled. Although we couldn’t have been more different — I, a terrestrial vertebrate constrained by joints and bound to air; she, a marine mollusk with not a single bone, who breathed water — she was clearly as curious about me as I was about her.
— Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness
Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.
— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Inventiveness depends upon two habits of mind, which we can adopt and develop: attention andcuriosity.Attention means paying attention.....Curiosity means just that. Endlessly curious. Endlessly asking questions. Endlessly wanting to knowhow, and why?
— Richard N. Bolles, What Color Is Your Parachute? 2012: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers
He read as much as his curiosity demanded - which is to say all
— Henry Miller
Now it is quite true to say that curiosity, exactly like its analogue, lust, never ends and is never satisfied; but man was made for something more than this. He was made to rise, above curiosity and lust, to love, and through love to the attainment of truth.
— Seraphim Rose, Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age
Generous listening is powered by curiosity, a virtue we can invite and nurture in ourselves to render it instinctive. It involves a kind of vulnerability - a willingness to be surprised, to let go of assumptions and take in ambiguity. The listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other, and patiently summons one's own best self and one's own best words and questions.
— Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
Ability to find the answers is more important than ability to know the answers.
— Amit Kalantri
The curiosity of lazy men is gossip
— Goitsemang Mvula
It may seem an easy task to disregard a secret but secrets are like splinters beneath the flesh, the infection spreads and spreads and then the limb turns gangrenous and must be sawn away, all for the sake of a sliver of wood.
— Keith  Miller, The Book of Flying
But something held him, as the fatalist can always be held: by curiosity, pessimism, by sheer inertia.
— William Faulkner, Light in August
At the beginning of that interval a type-machine was a curiosity. The person who owned one was a curiosity, too. But now it is the other way about: the person who doesn't own one is a curiosity.
— Mark Twain, The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories
My growing collection of facts keeps overlapping with my life.
— A.J. Jacobs, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
A central argument is never a summary. It is more like a generator.
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
Every blossoming flower warns you that it is time to seek the Lord; be not out of tune with nature, but let your heart bud and bloom with holy desires.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Based on the English Standard Version
The author jokes that the culture at his first job at Entertainment Weekly chased away the worthwhile aspects of his Brown education, but in so doing he makes a subtle point about the profound impact of the culture with which we surround ourselves and how easily we can be defined and constrained by our jobs.
— A.J. Jacobs, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
I think it is a good thing that the Trinity is confusing If it weren't, we wouldn't have the desire to learn more.
— Jule Warner
Maybe you've heard the story of the man who was so driven by this curiosity that he roamed among soldiers in battlefields. He sought a man who had died and returned to life amid the wounded struggling for their lives in pools of blood, a soldier who could tell him about the secrets of the Otherworld. But one of Tamerlane's warriors, taking the seeker for one of the enemy, cleared him in half with a smooth stroke of his scimitar, causing him to conclude that in the Hereafter man is split in two.
— Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red
How is it possible to know so much about a person and yet know nothing at all?
— Adele Parks, Husbands
I'm not a nazis or fascist, I'm just normal guy who have a lot of curios about a lot of stuff in other words I have curiosity for information.
— Deyth Banger
The love of humanity does not prevent us from being good journalists.
— Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914
He [Widmerpool] moistened his lips, though scarcely perceptibly. I thought his mixture of secretiveness and curiosity quite intolerable.
— Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement
I was sitting on a bench having a bagel, but from where I was both jogging and scullng looks good to me. -- Sam
— Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing Script Book
He has not shown the special interest in reading that we should like to see but he likes shop work. George H. W. Bush's parents on his Andover application
— H.W. Brands
His notes to the outside world offered a window on an active, sympathetic, eclectic mind.
— H.W. Brands
Curiosity is a sickness of want to understanding.
— Jan Jansen
Samuel FB Morse's SECOND question over the telegraph was, "Have you any news?
— Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion
If you ask one question, it will lead you to another, and another. It's like peeling an onion.
— Lemony Snicket, The End
The writer as boxer says he develops by, "learning from everyone who'll spar with me.
— Davis Miller, Approaching Ali: A Reclamation in Three Acts
The more my brain was fed, the hungrier it became.
— Kevin DeYoung, Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem
In liminal space, one meets the unknown, the marginalized, the synchronistic, the other, the unconscious edge of one's former narratives. At this point, the possibility to try out new narratives, to reframe one's story, becomes critical. Through narratives of participation the center of gravity shifts from fear and defensiveness to curiosity, creativity, and celebration. One begins to take a stand to validate one own's affects and doubts while at the same time interrogating them. The effect of such a shift is that the area of questioning about the self, the world, and the use of narrative language begins to widen noticeably. We can no longer assume there will be an outcome of homogeneous accounts through dialogue. The frames of narratives of participation anticipate heterogeneity rather than accord.
— Helene Shulman, Toward Psychologies of Liberation
Swaddle in our favorites, we missed out on what was in our peripheral vision.
— Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
When a mosquito sees a light in the darkness, it is drawn to it by an urge too powerful to resist. Even if the light is a bug zapper, caked with the carcasses of all the mosquito's electrocuted relatives, the poor insect will still use the last flap of its wings to fly to its death. It simply can't help it.
— Keith Graves
The idea of the original had no place.
— Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
As with all travel, replacing familiar surroundings with the unknown fires an electric charge that awakens a sense of adventure.
— Joe Cawley
Without stories we end up with stereotypes -- a flat earth with flat cardboard figures that have no texture or depth, no INTERIOR.
— Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers
It is always an attractive moment when curiosity takes hold.
— Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer
David set me to learn other skills, too, in those days of restless waiting.
— Geraldine Brooks, The Secret Chord
My between-books strategy was reading voraciously and on a whim.
— Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
Norman Mailer enhances the beauty of pugilism by elegantly exploring it.
— Davis Miller, Approaching Ali: A Reclamation in Three Acts
The world shall retire from me before I shall retire from the world. John Quincy Adams
— Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life
Do you really understand all this army stuff?It helps not to be too bright, sir.
— M*A*S*H Episode Guide Team, M*A*S*H EPISODE GUIDE: Details All 251 Episodes with Plot Summaries. Searchable. Companion to DVDs Blu Ray and Box Set.
Lincoln was less well-read than many a professor or journalist, but what he read, he read deeply.
— Richard Brookhiser, Founders' Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln loved other people's jokes as much as his own.
— Richard Brookhiser, Founders' Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln
Curiosity is the driving force that propels humanity forward.
— Debasish Mridha
The life-changing encounters that John Quincy Adams made as an adolescent on his own in Stockholm began with a friendship he struck up at a bookstore.
— Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life
The commonplace books of the old Puritans were invaluable to them. They would never have been able to compile such works as they did if they had not been careful in collecting and arranging their matter under different heads.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Based on the English Standard Version
God has made all things that are in the world to be our teachers.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students
One of the peculiar children's perspective out of time allows him to take minute interest in every resident of the town and to chronicle everything we did for the entire day he lives over and over.
— Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Watch for subjects as you go but the city or the country. Keep your eyes and ears open, and you will hear and see angels.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students
Be interested yourself, and you will interest others.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students
When you don't have a job (requiring reading) and you are doing your own reading you've got deep psychological questions. As deep as those of a little boy.
— Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work
Reading what you want, and having one book lead to the next, is the way I found my discipline.
— Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work
Curiosity lies in a hidden corner of the scientific mind.
— Eraldo Banovac
You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
— Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
A Nobel Prize winner was asked how he became a scientist. He said that every day after school, his mother would ask him not what he learned but whether he asked a good question today. That, he said, was how he became a scientist.
— Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
College is about exposing students to many things and creating an aphrodisiac atmosphere so that they might fall in lifelong love with a few.
— David Brooks
If life were fattening, Walter Cronkite would weigh 500 pounds.
— Douglas Brinkley, Cronkite
Theology must have the character of a living procession.
— Karl Barth
Intellectual curiosity and the human brain are the root of science.
— Eraldo Banovac
The childish urge to understand everything doesn't necessarily fade when the time approaches for you to do the most adult thing of all: vanish.
— Clive James
On a medical school professor noted for slowly, carefully interviewing the patient: "He taught the love of truth.
— David McCullough, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
Guyal of Sfere had been born one apart from his fellows and early proved a source of vexation for his sire. Normal in outward configuration, there existed within his mind a void that ached for nourishment. It was as if a spell had been cast upon his birth, a harassment visited on the child in a spirit of sardonic mockery, so that every occurrence, no matter how trifling, became a source of wonder and amazement. Even as young as four he was expounding such inquiries as: ‘Why do squares have more sides than triangles?’‘How will we see when the sun goes dark?’‘Do flowers grow under the ocean?’‘Do stars hiss and sizzle when rain comes by night?
— Jack Vance
Replace Fear of Radiation with Curiosity
— Steven Magee
Nature answers every question.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Elliston thought consistency less important than vitality and intelligence and passion.
— David Halberstam, The Powers That Be
Remind yourself daily to spend more time being interested then interesting.
— Jason Jennings
he was almost joyously what he had always been, a lot of gee whiz, it was all new and fresh even when surely he had seen much of it before, and it was as if he took delight in not having been changed externally by all that he had seen.
— David Halberstam
It was a wonderful combination for a reporter, the exterior so comforting, the interior so driven.
— David Halberstam, The Powers That Be
He took the trolley instead of the bus because it was smoother and he could read on it.
— Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate
Goldwater's approach to any political problem invariably derived from the evidence of his own eyes.
— Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
Children live life as a controlled experiment.
— Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood
All writers begin as readers, and the ones worth reading continue life as more prolific readers than writers.
— Thomas Swick
Curiosity is the primary fuel that drives lifelong education.
— Dhaval Gajera
Absence of questions is not proof of answers.
— Sweety Shinde, Arjun: Without a Doubt
Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us. No reader worth his salt trots along in obedience to a time-table.
— C.S. Lewis
Those that see too much quickly find themselves seeing nothing at all.
— Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey
Ten minutes later, I chance a second look. They say curiosity killed the cat. I wonder what that cat was looking at, and was it as interesting as this?
— Sheena Hutchinson, Discovering April
Curiosity is my great vice. I fear you have seen through to the heart of me, and now seek to exploit my weakness
— George R.R. Martin
Berg was proud of his storytelling to the point where he collected stories about telling stories.
— Nicholas Dawidoff, The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
Curiosity is a descending stair…that leads to only who-knows-where.
— Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey
We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things, because we're curious,and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
— Walt Disney Company
How quickly we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story "Nightfall," about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove people mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen.
— Roger Ebert
If we watch the interactions between human beings, we will receive a graduate-level education.
— Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth
A popular perception that political news is boring is no minor issue; for when news fails to harness the curiosity and attention of a mass audience through its presentational techniques, a society becomes dangerously unable to grapple with its own dilemmas and therefore to marshal the popular will to change and improve itself.
— Alain de Botton, The News: A User's Manual
Important insights ought never to be limited to the group from which may arise.
— Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth
Curiosity also makes a great student.
— Gemma Malley, The Resistance
Some time curiosity kill's you but it still worth to Die for
— Iraniya Naynesh
She was never satisfied with anything less than perfection, but she was no grind. She was too interested in people.
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
Whereas Taft discouraged the young Yale student from extracurricular reading, fearful it would detract from required courses, Roosevelt read widely yet managed to stand near the top of his class. The breath of his numerous interests allowed him to draw on knowledge across various disciplines, from zoology in philosophy and religion, from poetry and drama to history and politics.
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
Why bother with fictional characters and plots when the world was full of more marvelous stories that were true, with characters so fresh, so powerful, so new, that they stepped from into the narratives under their own power?
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
Science is a satisfactory curiosity.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
The Yale graduate who had refused to read outside the course curriculum (the future Pres. Taft) suddenly found himself inspired.
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
If he (Teddy Roosevelt) lacked Will Taft's immediate charisma, gradually his classmates could not resist the spell of his highly original personality.
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
(Theodore) Roosevelt confessed early fascination with "girls'stories" such as Little Man and Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl.
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
Perhaps we need to separate youth from education. Education lasts forever. Youth is the time for exploration, maturation, socialization.
— Jeff Jarvis, What Would Google Do?
In the real world, the tests are all open book.
— Jeff Jarvis, What Would Google Do?
His work was defined by emphasis on the subversiveness philosophy, which asks questions, as opposed to the self-satisfaction of politics, which believes it has answers and insists on them.
— Harvey Mansfield
Movies lost their appeal when people realized their real lives were more interesting.
— Star Trek Enterprise
Be curious! Curiosity is the mother of all knowledge.
— Debasish Mridha
I watched the surrounding landscape with great curiosity, and I wanted to discover the words that could describe all its unspoiled beauty.
— Daniel J. Rice, The Unpeopled Season: Journal from a North Country Wilderness
Real scientists do not take vacations. They take field trips...
— Edward O. Wilson
The time travelers are usually adapt at "intercrossing" different fields of expertise. That's the beauty of the hobbyist: it's generally easier to mix different intellectual fields when you have a whole array of them littering your study or your garage.
— Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
She'd been mad for him as a girl, but she'd chalked that up to youthful infatuation. She'd tracked the events of his life religiously for a decade, but she'd told herself that was idle curiosity. And now... now she desired him so much she could scarcely stand, but surely that was only lust. Wasn't it?
— Tessa Dare, Twice Tempted by a Rogue
Very early it was noticed that I had a good memory
—  therefore I was insistently tormented with learning everything by heart.
A taste for literature and a turn for business, united in the same person, never fails to make a great man.
— John  Adams
I shall think soon that what people say is true: every woman is possessed by her own peculiar devil of curiosity
— Nikolai Gogol
The author perceptively outlines what might be an underrated aspect of his subject and of many others whose public achievements are of note – a "gift for friendship". McCullough says Adams, despite his towering intellect and curmudgeonly demeanor, had a soft heart for other people and a genuine interest in their particulars.
— David McCullough, John Adams
Time travelers tend, as a group, to have a lot of hobbies.
— Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
If you want to be relevant only in your household, then you only need to know the things that are important in your house, and if you want to be relevant in your neighborhood, you need to know what's important in your neighborhood. The same thing applies to your city, state, and country. And if you want to be relevant to the entire world, program that computer known as your brain with all kinds of information from everywhere in order to prepare yourself.
— Ben Carson, One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America's Future
Reading, my earliest refuge in the unknown world, made me want to venture into it.
— Maureen Corrigan, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books
Rather than literally burning the midnight oil, which he judged to be unhealthy, John Adams advised his son to make the most of college by developing an inquisitive outlook that would prompt him to get to know the most exceptional scholars and question them closely. "Ask them about their tutors, manner of teaching. Observe what books lie on their tables. Fall into questions of literature, science, or what you will.
— David McCullough
One of the many drawbacks of this "I teach what I am" approach is that it stifles classroom discussion. Any disagreement with the professor's expertise comes off as an ad hominem attack.
— Maureen Corrigan, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books
Curiosity is the ultimate power tool.
— Roy Underhill
For Tolstoy . . . anything that human beings do has its glory. . . . I think he can be said to have hated nothing that ever happened.
— Mark Van Doren
Curiosity deepest connection that we have with knowledge, wisdom and life. Incuriosity is cutting all these connections.
— Baris Gencel
And I'm not assuming and I'm not judging. I'm just being curious.
— Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story
It is very rarely that a middle-aged man finds an author who gives him, what he knew so often in his teens and twenties, the sense of having opened a new door.
— C.S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature
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.
— Jack Finney, Time and Again
A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiviness is bitter or sweet.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
Curiosity evokes ‘concern’; it evokes the care one takes for what exists and could exist; a readiness to find strange and singular what surrounds us; a certain relentlessness to break up our familiarities and to regard otherwise the same things; a fervor to grasp what is happening and what passes; a casualness in regard to the traditional hierarchies of the important and the essential. I dream of a new age of curiosity. We have the technical means for it; the desire is there; the things to be known are infinite; the people who can employ themselves at this task exist. Why do we suffer? From too little: from the channels that are too narrow, skimpy, quasi-monopolistic, insufficient. There is no point in adopting a protectionist attitude, to prevent ‘bad’ information from invading and suffocating the ‘good.’ Rather, we must multiply the paths and the possibility of comings and goings.
— Michel Foucault
Caring means cultivating the skills of an active listener. That is easier said than done, as an anecdote about the extraordinary social skills of British politicianBenjamin Disraeli and his rival William Gladstone illustrates ... The rivalry between the two statesmen piqued the curiosity of American Jennie Jerome, admired beauty and the mother of Winston Churchill. Ms. Jerome arranged to dine with Gladstone and then with Disraeli, on consecutive evenings. Afterward, she described the difference between the two men this way: "When I left the dining room after sitting next to Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But when I sat next to Disraeli, I left feeling that I was the cleverest woman.
— Marian Deegan, Relevance: Matter More
I just wish Mary Elizabeth would ask me questions other than “What's up?
— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Most students have to do some work to resuscitate their childlike curiosity. The best way to do that is to start asking questions again—lots of them.
— Hal B. Gregersen
Personalization filters serve a kind of invisible autopropaganda, indoctrinating us with our own ideas, amplifying our desire for things that are familiar in leaving us oblivious to the dangers lurking in the dark territory of the unknown.
— Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You
Curiosity is the beginning of wisdom.
— Françoise Sagan, Dans un mois, dans un an
To see persons looking with children's eyes at any ordinary scenery, is a proof that they possess the charming faculty of drawing new sensations from an old experience...
— Thomas Hardy, Desperate Remedies
Science is not an intelligence test. Intuition is important, knowing what kind of questions to ask. The other thing is a passion for getting to the core of the problem.
— Torsten Wiesel
I think I'm more curious than I used to be - curious about why people live like they do and how they make sense of their time... Do they see how the sun has made it like a champion around the world overnight, and that all day today we get another chance to be brave, to exercise our humanity with boldness and deft precision?
— Dee Williams
For Jefferson, William and Mary was largely about what university life is supposed to be about: reading books, enjoying the company of like-minded, and savoring teachers who seemed to be ambassadors from other, richer, writer worlds. Jefferson believed Williamsburg "the finest school of manners and morals that ever existed in America.
— Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
More interest you have more knowledge you have and more knowledge you have more questions you have and more questions means more wisdom you have and you are already inside the vein of life which is running with enormous speed.
— Baris Gencel
Curiosity is a terrible thing, he was thinking. How is it possible to stop oneself from needing to know?
— Brian Evenson, Last Days
He turned the presidency – and the President's House – into something it had not been before: a center of curiosity and inquiry, of vibrant institution that played informal but important roles in the broader life of the nation, from science to literature.
— Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
I suppose without curiosity a man would be a tortoise. Very comfortable life, a tortoise has. Goes to sleep all winter and doesn't eat anything more than grass as far as I know, to live all the summer. Not an interesting life perhaps, but a very peaceful one.
— Agatha Christie, Postern of Fate
For me, the idea of living small has always involved being curious - taking a look at how my day-to-day is connected to the larger world around me, and to the delicate universe that sits between my ears and in my small body.
— Dee Williams
So curious you must be. Like little calves poking their heads through the fence with big eyes and a headful of curiosity.
— Carew Papritz, The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
The ability to ask questions is a virtue and a trait of a free thinker.
— Sabina Nore
Writing seems to free them (students) of the idea that math is a collection of right answers own by the teacher – a body of knowledge that she will dispense in chunks and that they have to swallow and digest.
— John Countryman
Curiosity was a bad character trait for a private investigator to have. It created work.
— Dee Henderson, Before I Wake
...curiosity had the same impact on him as caffeine... (Commissario Soneri)
— Valerio Varesi, River of Shadows
Editors are licensed to be curious.
— William Zinsser
I became one of those anonymous Americans who tries to keep his mind sharp and inquisitive while performing all the humiliating rituals of the middle class
— Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
In a way, her strangeness, her naivete, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art from, she became dangerous.
— Toni Morrison, Sula
society is unconcerned with the aftermath of sensation.
— John le Carré, Call for the Dead
Intelligence comes with hard work and curiosity for the unknown.
— Roberto Llamas
Eva’s only fault has been the one of wanting to know more, to experiment and search with her own sources the laws of the Universe, of her own body and to refuse the teachings from “above”. Eva, basically, represents the curiosity of science against the passive acceptance that belongs to faith.
— Margherita Hack
I suspect that scientists are driven by the sense that the world out there - reality - contains a hidden order, and the scientist is trying to elucidate the hidden order in our reality. And that impulse is what the scientist shares with the mystic. The impulse to get to the bottom of things. To know how the world really works. To know the nature of things.
— Michael Crichton, Travels
Only one person in 1000 is a bore, and HE is interesting because he is one person in 1000.
— Harold Nicolson
Why shouldn’t your curiosity about the world be rewarded?
— Dave Eggers, The Circle
You know you’re a good leader when people follow you out of curiosity.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
You are not a human being if you don't have a curiosity.
— Anurag Tomar
Curiosity is a strong fire, and once ignited, it is not easily put out.
— Susan Dennard, Something Strange and Deadly
We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive; love or grief or despair or hatred is what drives us on. We'll spy relentlessly on the dead; we'll open their letters, we'll read their journals, we'll go through their trash, hoping for a hint, a final word, an explanation, from those who have deserted us--who've left us holding the bag, which is often a good deal emptier than we'd supposed.
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
but curiosity is a restless and scrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience, that hers should be baffled by another.
— J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla
A person without curiosity may as well be dead.
— Judy Blume, Summer Sisters
You deplore what I did, but you still want to know the results of my research.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow
Yet I am incapable of writing the only kind of novel which interests me: a book powered with an intellectual or moral passion strong enough to create order, to create a new way of looking at life. It is because I am too diffused. I have decided never to write another novel. I have fifty 'subjects' I could write about; and they would be competent enough. If there is one thing we can be sure of, it is that competent and informative novels will continue to pour from the publishing houses. I have only one, and the least important, of the qualities necessary to write at all, and that is curiosity. It is the curiosity of the journalist.
— Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
The temptationTo take the precious things we have apartTo see how they workMust be resisted for they never fit together 
— Billy Bragg, A Lover Sings: Selected Lyrics
This disease of curiosity.
— Augustine of Hippo
He wants to see, he wants to know, only to see and know. I'm aware that it is this mentality, this curiosity, which is responsible for the hydrogen bomb and the imminent demise of civilization and that we would all be better off if we were still at the stone-worshipping stage. Though surely it is not this affable inquisitiveness that should be blamed.
— Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg
I wanted to be curious and smart and unappeasable until I got a sentence to mean exactly what I ordered it to mean.
— Pat Conroy, My Losing Season: A Memoir
The path between faith and understanding demands both obedience and inquiry. If Christianity is true, if it goes to the center of the universe and explains every stone and leaf the way we Christians think, then the more we search it out and explore it the more reasons we will have to be confident in that truth.
— Matthew Lee Anderson
Miss Fitt, you know curiosity gets men killed."I grinned. "Then I daresay it's good I'm a woman.
— Susan Dennard, Something Strange and Deadly
I like to feel dumb. That’s how I know there’s more in the world than me.
— Susan Sontag
Are you missing the library again?" Seth asked, startling her as he walked into the room.Kendra turned to face her brother. "You caught me," she congratulated him. "I'm reading.""I bet the librarians back home are panicking. Summer vacation, and no Kendra Sorenson to keep them in business. Have they been sending you letters?""Might not hurt you to pick up a book, just as an experiment."Whatever. I looked up the definition for 'nerd' in the dictionary. Know what it said?""I bet you'll tell me."" 'If you're reading this, you are one.' "You're a riot." Kendra turned back to the journal, flipping to a random page.Seth took a seat on his bed across from her. "Kendra, seriously, I can sort of see reading a cool book for fun, but dusty old journals? Really? Has anybody told you there are magical creatures out there?" He pointed out the window."Has anybody told you some of those creatures can eat you?" Kendra responded. "I'm not reading these just for fun. They have good info.""like what? Patton and Lena smooching?"Kendra rolled her eyes. "I'm not telling. You'll end up in a tar pit.""There's a tar pit?" he said, perking up. "Where?
— Brandon Mull, Grip of the Shadow Plague
You can lose a friend in springtime easier than any other season if you're too curious.
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
I ask people impertinent questions. Hopefully turning up pertinent answers.
— Jim Butcher, Small Favor
That's always the worst: the not knowing. Because then you're stuck with a hundred questions no one can answer.
— Marni Bates, Awkward
Curiosity did not kill the cat all by itself.
— Laird Barron, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories
A man with a great curiosity will never get bored even if he lives millions years!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
I don't know what is behind the curtain
—  only that I need to find out.
The shiny paint laid on by curiosity's hand has worn off. What thing better can a man know than the love of Christ, which passes knowledge?
— Jim Elliot