#curiosity

The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes. ↗

— H.L. Mencken

#sacrifice #samaritan #science #men

No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out. ↗

— B.F. Skinner

#curiosity #motivation #motivational

It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#common-sense #curiosity #deadly-sins #faults #gold

Children rarely want to know who their parents were before they were parents, and when age finally stirs their curiosity, there is no parent left to tell them. ↗

— Russell Baker

#before #children #curiosity #finally #know

Each story we approach in the same way, with curiosity and interest and determination to get behind the image. ↗

— Martin Bashir

#behind #curiosity #determination #each #get

In a house where there are small children the bathroom soon takes on the appearance of the Old Curiosity Shop. ↗

— Robert Benchley

#bathroom #children #curiosity #house #old

It's through curiosity and looking at opportunities in new ways that we've always mapped our path at Dell. There's always an opportunity to make a difference. ↗

— Michael Dell

#curiosity #dell #difference #looking #make

I have this extraordinary curiosity about all subjects of the natural and human world and the interaction between the physical sciences and the social sciences. ↗

— Ian Hacking

#between #curiosity #extraordinary #human #human world

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. ↗

— Zora Neale Hurston

#poking #prying #purpose #research

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#children #clarity #curiosity #intelligence #intolerance