Mark Helprin Quotes

Curiosity is one of the lowest of the human faculties. You will have noticed in daily life that when people are inquisitive they nearly always have bad memories and are usually stupid at bottom.

A curious mind is the most important attribute any man or woman can possess.

There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.

No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.

The important thing is to never stop questioning. Never lose a holy curiosity.

The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about every damn thing they are doing in their life.

I suppose without curiosity a man would be a tortoise. Very comfortable life, a tortoise has.

You have to have curiosity in life. The moment you don't have any more curiosity, then don't do anything. Retire and stay in your house.

How can people be so stupid? I marvel at that. See, I think you have to work as being ignorant - and if you're gonna work at being ignorant, why not work at being informed?

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

If one has curiosity, then one stands the chance of attain a high level of scientific inquiry.

Curiosity is the lust of the mind.

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

The job is to ask questions-it always was-and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.

I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the life blood of real civilization.

The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions.

The rare person is still interested in new advances when they are adults. There is possibly a correlation with intelligence. In any case, you have to be fairly bright to keep learning and changing attitudes as you get older.

I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That's why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place, and they're absolutely contradictory.

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ASK. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds.

I love to doubt as well as know.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

People don't always realize that my parents shared a sense of intellectual curiosity and a love of reading and of history.

An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things.

Be quick to learn and wise to know.