The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

Men are what their mothers made them.

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

You’ve got to invest in the world, you’ve got to read, you’ve got to go to art galleries, you’ve got to find out the names of plants. You’ve got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We’re amazing people.

I’m considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I’ve never been bored in my life.

To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Fear is a spirit that produces a feeling.

Children astound me with their inquisitive minds. The world is wide and mysterious to them, and as they piece together the puzzle of life, they ask ‚Why?‘ ceaselessly.

You always admire what you really don’t understand.

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

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.

Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

I have wondered about time all my life.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they were found because it was possible to find them.

Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

People have different emotional levels. Especially when you’re young.

She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.

Music is something no one can control.

The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.

In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a ‚continent,‘ a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness.

It’s time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth. Mankind has a deep need to explore, to learn, to know. We also happen to be sociable creatures. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark.

Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

I’m pretty calculating. I take stuff that I know appeals to people’s bad sides and match it up with stuff that appeals to their good sides.

The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to ever have the curiosity or discipline… because you need to be alone to find out anything.

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.

Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.

We’re hardwired for connection. There’s no arguing with the bioscience. But we can want it so badly we’re trying to hot-wire it.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

I only act from my heart.

When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

As social animals, we are extremely susceptible to the moods of other people. This gives us the power to subtly infuse into people the appropriate mood for influencing them.

I’m not lesbian; I’m not bisexual; I’m not straight. I’m just curious.

It’s in the best interest of the radical left types – best psychological and strategic interest – to refuse to admit to the possibility that reasonable people can object to their ideological staff. Because if reasonable people objected, that would imply that their ideological stance is not reasonable.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

Fear is the thought of admitted inferiority.

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

You’re unlikely to discover something new without a lot of practice on old stuff, but further, you should get a heck of a lot of fun out of working out funny relations and interesting things.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.