Quotations about

Curiosity

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

—Samuel Johnson

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.

—Jacques Cousteau

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

—Alvin Toffler

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.

—Franklin P. Adams

There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing.

—Lorraine Hansberry

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

—George Bernard Shaw

We take other men's knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idle and superficial learning. We must make them our own. We are just like a man who, needing fire, went to a neighbor's house to fetch it, and finding a very good one there, sat down to warm himself without remembering to carry any back home. What good does it do us to have our belly full of meat if it is not digested, if it is not transformed into us, if it does not nourish and support us?

—Michel de Montaigne

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.

—James Thurber

People travel to faraway places to watch in fascination the kind of people they ignore at home.

—Dagobert D. Runes

By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

—G. K. Chesterton

Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient.

—Eugene S. Wilson

Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.

—Steven Wright

What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions.

—Walter Pater

Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance.

—William Wirt

Most people would say I'm pretty cold, but I think of it more as…private. People are always saying "how are you?" to each other, and I guess I don't see why I should answer such a personal question for just anyone.

—Amie Kaufman in Illuminae