Curiosity Quotes - Page 17

• God is not an encyclopedia whose task is to satisfy our curiosity.

  Jacques Ellul

  Tasks, Encyclopedia

  "The Politics of God and the Politics of Man".

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• In such a case secrecy must be absolute to be effective, and although mere vague curiosity induced many persons of my intimate acquaintance to ask to be allowed to just go in and have a peep, I never admitted anyone.

  Henry Bessemer

  Intimate, Secrecy, Cases

  Sir Henry Bessemer (1905). “Sir Henry Bessemer, F.R.S.: An autobiography”

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• Adrienne Mayor's inquiry into the myth--and surprising reality--of Amazon women begins with the fierce Greek huntress Atalanta, but takes us deep into the past and as far afield as the Great Wall of China. With the restless curiosity and meticulous scholarship that have become her hallmark, the author once again has found a gap in my bookshelf and filled it, admirably.

  Steven Saylor

  Wall, Past, Reality

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• Why is man man? As long as we have had minds to think with, stars to ponder upon, dreams to disturb us, curiosity to inspire us, hours free for meditation, words to place our thoughts in order, the question like a restless ghost has prowled the cellars of our consciousness.

  Robert Ardrey

  Dream, Stars, Men

  Robert Ardrey (1977). “The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man”

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• Unfortunately, the only recognized relics of yesterday's farmers are obsolete curiosities when the greatest relic, their philosophy of living, is seldom considered.

  Eric Sloane

  Philosophy, Yesterday, Obsolete

  Eric Sloane (2004). “Our Vanishing Landscape”, p.15, Courier Corporation

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• Perhaps I am just a hopeless rationalist, but isn't fascination as comforting as solace? Isn't nature immeasurably more interesting for its complexities and its lack of conformity to our hopes? Isn't curiosity as wondrously and fundamentally human as compassion?

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Nature, Compassion, Interesting

  "Eight Little Piggies". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "Tires to sandals", 1993.

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• Our culture is obsessed with youth because we have lost the ancient knowledge that growth never stops. We are not transient, momentary mistakes in
  the cosmos- evolutionary curiosities that rise like mayflies, swarm for a day, and are gone. We are players who are here to stay, and the universe was built with us in mind. We reflect it, with our deepest loves and loftiest aspirations, just as it reflects us.

  Eben Alexander

  Mistake, Player, Mind

  Eben Alexander (2014). “The Map of Heaven: How Science, Religion, and Ordinary People Are Proving the Afterlife”, p.113, Simon and Schuster

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• When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds this message: If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

  David Ogilvy

  Office, People, Messages

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• The apartments of the rich are cabinets of curiosities: a conglomeration of classical antiquity, gothic, renaissance; Louis XIII... Something from every century but our own, a predicament that has arisen in no other period... so that we seem to be subsisting on the ruins of the past, as if the end of the world were near.

  Alfred de Musset

  Past, World, Renaissance

  "Confession d'un Enfant du Siécle". Book by Alfred de Musset, 1836.

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• I always wanted to see what America was like. I had that curiosity in my 20s when I was working in the theatre here [ in London]... there was the mystery of LA and I wondered what happened over there. I wanted to go and check it out and I'm pleased that I have.

  Tom Hiddleston

  America, Theatre, London

  "Marvel Avengers Assemble - Tom Hiddleston interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• I'm an actor, and part of my joy and my curiosity about the job that I do, is that actors have the privilege of exploring human nature in different ways.

  Tom Hiddleston

  Jobs, Joy, Different

  "Marvel Avengers Assemble - Tom Hiddleston interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• What conservation education must build is an ethical underpinning for land economics and a universal curiosity to understand the land mechanism. Conservation may then follow.

  Aldo Leopold

  Land, May, Conservation

  Aldo Leopold (1972). “Round River”, p.114, Oxford University Press

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• Men may be very learned, and yet very miserable; it is easy to be a deep geometrician, or a sublime astronomer, but very difficult to be a good man. I esteem, therefore, the traveller who instructs the heart, but despise him who only indulges the imagination. A man who leaves home to mend himself and others, is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is only a vagabond.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Country, Home, Heart

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “The works of Oliver Goldsmith. 2: Enquiry into the present state of polite learning; The citizen of the world”, p.106

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• I have always lived with the awareness of the impossibility of living. And what has made existence endurable to me is my curiosity as to how I would get from one minute, one day, one year to the next.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Years, One Day, Next

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• Energy and curiosity are the lifeblood of universities; the desire to find out, to uncover, to dig deeper, to puzzle out obscurities, is the spirit of the university, and it is a channelling of that unresting curiosity that holds mankind together.

  Robertson Davies

  Desire, Together, Obscurity

  Robertson Davies (1992). “The Cornish Trilogy”, Penguin Group USA

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• Few know the joys that spring from a disinterested curiosity. It is like a cheerful spirit that leads us through worlds filled with what is true and fair, which we admire and love because it is true and fair.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Spring, Love Is, Joy

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• True majorities, in a TV-dominated and anti-intellectual age, may need sound bites and flashing lights and I am not against supplying such lures if they draw children into even a transient concern with science. But every classroom has one [Oliver] Sacks , one [Eric] Korn, or one [Jonathan] Miller , usually a lonely child with a passionate curiosity about nature, and a zeal that overcomes pressures for conformity. Do not the one in fifty deserve their institutions as well magic places, like cabinet museums, that can spark the rare flames of genius?

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Lonely, Children, Museums

  Stephen Jay Gould (1995). “Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history”, Harmony

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• I have the highest veneration of those Gentleman, -- but, Sir, give me leave to demand, what right had they to say, We, the People? My political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask who authorized them to speak the language of, We, the People, instead of We, the States? States are the characteristics, and the soul of the confederation. If the States be not the agents of this compact, it must be one of great consolidated National Government of the people of all the States.

  Patrick Henry

  Government, Giving, People

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• Some, in their curiosity, will say, "But you Mormons have another Bible! Do you believe in the Old and New Testaments?" I answer we do believe in the Old and New Testaments, and we have also another book, called the Book of Mormon. What are the doctrines of the Book of Mormon? The same as those of the Bible.

  Brigham Young

  Believe, Book, Doctrine

  Brigham Young (1992). “The Essential Brigham Young”

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• The Mars rover Curiosity has sent back images of some odd things on the surface of Mars, and some people think they could be UFOs. Here's my question. If we're on the surface of Mars, aren't we the UFO?

  Jay Leno

  Thinking, People, Odd Things

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• Desire , to know why, and how, CURIOSITY; such as is in no living creature but Man ; so that Man is distinguished, not only by his Reason; but also by this singular Passion from other Animals ; in whom the appetite of food, and other pleasures of Sense, by predominance, take away the care of knowing causes; which is a Lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of Knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal Pleasure.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Perseverance, Passion, Animal

  Thomas Hobbes (2008). “Leviathan”, p.51, Simon and Schuster

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• Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe. The painter's art is more confined, and has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this power and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is totally engaged. What is done by Painting, must be done at one blow; curiosity has received at once all the satisfaction it can ever have.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Art, Blow, Mind

  Sir Joshua Reynolds (1842). “The Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds”, p.142

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• Avoid all refined speculations; confine yourself to simple reflections, and recur to them frequently. Those who pass too rapidly from one truth to another feed their curiosity and restlessness; they even distract their intellect with too great a multiplicity of views. Give every truth time to send down deep root into the heart.

  Francois Fenelon

  Heart, Reflection, Simple

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• With respect to the development of powers devoted to coping with specific scientific and economic problems we may say that the child should be growing in manhood. With respect to sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that the adult should be growing in childlikeness.

  John Dewey

  Children, Mind, Development

  John Dewey (2015). “Democracy and Education: Top American Authors”, p.41, 谷月社

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• In any case it is not normal to put into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that scientists put into their work.

  Theodore Kaczynski

  Effort, Satisfaction, Normal

  The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski (2005). “The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future”, p.39, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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