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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (7,136)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,847)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,804)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,915)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,874)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (3,947)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,838)
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- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,141)
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
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Quotations about curiosity
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.
Eric S. Raymond (b. 1957) American software developer, writer [a.k.a. ESR]
The Cathedral and the Bazaar, ch. 2, Rule 18 (1999)
(Source)
The humanist has four leading characteristics — curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
E. M. Forster (1879-1970) English novelist, essayist, critic, librettist [Edward Morgan Forster]
“George and Gide” Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
(Source)
The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (18 Aug 1830)
There ought not to be anything in the whole universe that man can’t poke his nose into — that’s the way we’re built and I assume that there’s some reason for it.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Methuselah’s Children [Lazarus Long] (1958)
Albert grunted. “Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?”
Mort thought for a moment. “No,” he said eventually, “what?”
There was silence.
Then Albert straightened up and said, “Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve ’em right.”
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Mort (1987)
Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.
Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. 4 (1928)
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
Letter to Carl Seelig (11 Mar 1952), Einstein Archive 39-013
Similar wording was used in a letter to Hans Muehsam (4 Mar 1953) Einstein Archive 38-424.
GILES: Grave robbing? That’s new, interesting.
BUFFY: I know you meant to say ‘gross and disturbing.’
GILES: Yes, of course. It’s a terrible thing, must put a stop to it.David Tyron "Ty" King (contemp.) American screenwriter, television producer
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2×02 “Some Assembly Required” (1997)
