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Curiosity Quotes

Samuel Johnson leads a short list. His Rambler essay of 1750 calls curiosity one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Edmund Burke, in his Philosophical Enquiry (1757), calls it the first and simplest emotion we discover in the human mind. Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer (1771) adds the cheerful corollary: ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no fibs.

The one flagged entry is the prediction that a hundred years after Voltaire’s day there would not be a Bible in the earth, credited to him and marked misattributed. The notes cite books of 1968 and 1972 and say that the Geneva Bible Society later used his press and house to produce Bibles.

Random quote on Curiosity

Most quoted on curiosity:

Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.

John Cage Richard Kostelanetz (1988)

It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it.

Robert Louis Stevenson Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)

Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.

Vladimir Nabokov Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

Francis realized he was afflicted with what his father used to term “an erection of the curiosity organ.”

James K. Morrow The Wine of Violence (1981)

Curiosity, which may or may not eventuate in something useful, is probably the outstanding characteristic of modern thinking.

Abraham Flexner

My childhood curiosity is the key to my remarkable achievements and my passion for science.

Francisca Nneka Okeke

We will compromise on almost anything, but not on our values, or our aesthetics, or our idealism, or our sense of curiosity.

Anita Roddick Body and Soul (1991)

Physiological experiment on animals is justifiable for real investigation; but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity.

Charles Darwin

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)

Anyone who consults a soothsayer on account of curiosity of the future will suffer capital punishment.

Constantius II

“Oh, my dear fellow! I’m not indulgin’ in implications. I’m merely givin’ tongue to my youthful curiosity, don’t y’ know.”

S. S. Van Dine The Bishop Murder Case (1929)

Curiosity is not a theological virtue.

Lois McMaster Bujold Ethan of Athos (1986)

Usually, I'm attracted by screenplays that stir my curiosity. I try to ask myself why the writer wants to tell this story.

Gong Yoo

Your genuine curiosity and empathy will be your most significant assets, so never lose sight of them.

Karen Davila

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 Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.

Colette Le Pur et l'Impur (The Pure and the Impure) (1932)

Kids are my favorites … their spirit and curiosity has not yet been dulled by schools.

Julius Sumner Miller

A journalist from Ukraine: Just out of curiosity, are you being held captive?

Viktor Yanukovych

“Their curiosity is normal. Naturally, they are our supporters. We’ve had people with us right from the start. Curiosity—it is OK.”

Jhoanna

“I have a curiosity about what photographs don’t do. What they leave out, their silence and the spaces they occupy between reality and desire.”

Jo Ratcliffe

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