Quotes about Inquiry

Curiosity is the far nobler sister of novelty. Curiosity invokes study. By definition, it is "interest leading to inquiry."[1] It does not look for diamonds on blades of grass; it looks for dew. If it's looking for diamonds, it mines. Curiosity isn't satisfied to climb a hill and then move on. To borrow words from Deuteronomy, it digs copper from them (Deuteronomy 8:9).

I've read a dozen different versions of Stanislavski's famous Three Questions, i.e. the queries an actor must ask him- or herself before playing any scene. Here's my version: Who am I? Why am I here? What do I want? The second two are pretty easy. It's the first that's the killer.

He fashioned hell for the inquisitive.

The more man learns, the less he knows.

So we keep asking, over and over Until a handful of earth Stops our mouths- But is that an answer?

Doubt in my tradition is something that is very helpful. Because of doubt, you can thirst more and you will get a higher kind of proof.

Let no one, then, seek to know from me what I know that I do not know; unless he perhaps wishes to learn to be ignorant of that of which all we know is, that it cannot be known.

Notwithstanding, in how many most petty and contemptible things is our curiosity daily tempted, and how often we give way, who can recount?

Independent inquiry is needed in your search for truth, not dependence on anyone else's view or a mere book.

All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

By doubting we come at truth.

An open mind is not an end in itself but a means to the end of finding truth.