Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It

When we know nothing about a subject, we find it hard to engage our brains, either because we can’t imagine finding it interesting or because we’re intimidated by the prospect of starting to learn about something that might, by its scale or complexity, defeat us.

Diversive curiosity follows no particular process or method, but slides from one novel object of attention to the next.

We confuse the practice of curiosity with ease of access to information and forget that real curiosity requires the exercise of effort.

Diversive curiosity can be a strength, leading people to take in more from their environment. But it can quickly become aimless, distracting, and frustrating.

Curious learners go deep, and they go wide.

The naughtiness of infants is experimental, a method of data collection.

This is what being human entails. We spend our entire lives at the entrance of a cave, caught between the safety of the familiar and the yearning for novelty, the peace of home and the thrill of travel, the tonic and dominant chords.

more state than trait. That is, our curiosity is highly responsive to the situation or environment we’re in. It follows that we can arrange our lives to stoke our curiosity or quash it.

People tend not to be curious about things of which they are completely ignorant.