conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.’

‘When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.’

Only fiction has the power to cross the mental barricades, to make strangers intelligible to each other, because it moves people’s hearts as well as engaging their minds.

J.S. Mill

Third, because the culture discourages questioning.

a truly curious person knows that she doesn’t always know what she wants to know about.

Michael Marquardt identifies four reasons that we don’t ask questions when we ought to.

You practise empathic curiosity when you genuinely try to put yourself in the shoes — and the mind — of the person you’re talking to; to see things from their perspective.

A puzzle is something that commands our curiosity until we have solved it. A mystery, by contrast, never stops inviting enquiry.