Abraham Flexner Quotes

An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex.

It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of teaching have not yet entirely strangled that sacred spirit of curiosity and inquiry, for this delicate plant needs freedom no less than stimulation.

The most glorious vision of the intellectual life is still that which is loosely called humanist: the idea of a mind committed yet dispassionate, ready to stand alone, curious, eager, skeptical. The banner of critical independence, ragged and torn though it may be, is still the best we have.

I don't think I would have been such a good runner if I hadn't enjoyed it.

Never...stop at the boundaries of what you think your knowledge or training would suggest. If a problem grabs you, run with it and try to understand it from beginning to end, even if that means learning new techniques or developing them yourself.

I learn the whole time. I think it would be dull if I thought I was going to work and wouldn't find something new. We always learn.

I don’t really know what “intellectual” means, but if it means you’ve got a desire to learn, you’ve got a desire to look for things that haven’t been presented to you, then, maybe. I think that “intellectual” is quite an exclusive word. I think it’s just for anyone that has a thirst or a hunger to improve themselves, or a yearning to escape from somewhere to get to a better place.

Thinking begins when you ask really difficult questions.

The race will go to the curious, the slightly mad, and those with an un-satiated passion for learning and dare-deviltry.

I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.

I will find any excuse to go into somebody's study or ask them what they are reading. I can't think of too many other things that say what goes on in someone's head than the books they have.

What is "this drive"? It's the tendency to not simply accept things as they are but to want to think about them, to understand them. To not be content to simply feel sad but to ask what sadness means. To not just get a bus pass but to think about the economic reasons getting a bus pass makes sense. I call this tendency the intellectual.

My mother's always looking for answers. She's always searching for new information. I think she has a thirst for hunger that very few possess innately.

My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence are provided by such a god. We would be unappreciative of those gifts (as well as unable to take such a course of action) if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves. On the other hand, if such a traditional god does not exist, our curiosity and our intelligence are the essential tools for managing our survival. In either case, the enterprise of knowledge is consistent with both science and religion, and is essential for the welfare of the human species.

Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.

The pursuit of science, the study of the great works, the value of free inquiry, in short, the very idea of living the life of the mind - yes, these formative and abiding principles of higher education in America had their first and firmest advocate, and their greatest embodiment, in a tall, fair-headed, friendly man who watched this university take form from the mountainside where he lived, the university whose founding he called a crowning achievement to along and well-spent life.

I think the best part of being an author is that I get to learn about anything I want and explain it away as research.

I wouldn't want to compare myself to David Byrne whom I consider a genius, but what I think what we have in common is that he's also a guy who is very interested in the world and who has a lot of passions beyond singing and playing guitar.

Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.

I longed to read everything I possibly could, and the things I read in turn produced new yearnings.

Think and wonder, wonder and think.

I think a part of evolution is the desire to know yourself, and know the world you live in, and discover everything you can about the world you live in. That world can be the microcosm of your own emotions, or a society, or the cosmos. There's this constant desire for knowledge.

I think I benefited from being equal parts ambitious and curious. And of the two, curiosity has served me best.

Does the pursuit of truth give you as much pleasure as before? Surely it is not the knowing but the learning, not the possessing but the acquiring, not the being-there but the getting there that afford the greatest satisfaction. If I have exhausted something, I leave it in order to go again into the dark. Thus is that insatiable man so strange: when he has completed a structure it is not in order to dwell in it comfortably, but to start another.

I think what inspires me or what keeps me inspired is my curiosity.