Skip to content

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 Growing Up (1982)

Another quote →

Topics

Curiosity

More quotes by Russell Baker

People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.

So far as I could make out, what writers did couldn't even be classified as work.

Growing Up (1982)

The old notion that brevity is the essence of wit has succumbed to the modern idea that tedium is the essence of quality.

There's a Country in My Cellar (1990)

It seems to be a law of American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic.

Unaware of history's higher significance, I slumbered through the bliss of infancy, feeling no impulse whatever to make something of myself.

Growing Up (1982)

All Russell Baker quotes →

You may also like

The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers.

Bryan Magee Confessions of a Philosopher (1997)

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

Samuel Johnson The Rambler (1750)

My brain, otherwise a sound instrument, has a serious defect—a hypertrophied lobe of curiosity.

Jack Vance The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (1966)

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.

James Stephens

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Russell Baker (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.