Studs Terkel Quotes

I investigate more directly. I tend to ask a lot of questions and don't feel satisfied until I have the answer.

I think you go through a stage where you're constantly asking questions because you're learning every day, and when it's like that you need to bring results with it.

Basically, I'm a perpetual student. I start by finding a subject I really don't know very much, but that I'm curious about. I learn about it through books in a library, by doing interviews with people who know a lot about the subject, and by going out on my own and seeing for myself what's happening.

A good scientist is a person in whom the childhood quality of perennial curiosity lingers on. Once he gets an answer, he has other questions.

I am an investigator by inclination. I feel a great thirst for knowledge.

Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.

That's sort of my mindset, more than anything else, whenever I get into anything new. I'm in this constant pursuit for new knowledge. I think I sometimes focus more on all the things that I don't know and what I'm trying to figure out.

I have a very inquisitive mind, and I like to know. Like, if somebody uses a term and I don't understand, I always look it up.

If I don't have something to do, I'm not the kind of person who can sit on a beach on holiday. I've got to go and check things out and see things and look at things, and have some kind of itinerary in my mind. I think that a lot of people who are, in some ways, successful are kind of like that.

We're all curious about a lot of things.

Once you've decided that something's absolutely true, you've closed your mind on it, and a closed mind doesn't go anywhere. Question everything. That's what education's all about.

I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe.

When I don't know the answer to something, I write a book about it because it gives me a chance to explore it and go to some people who do have the answers.

Good leaders are very curious, and they spend a lot of time trying to learn things.

We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species.

The love of experiment was very strong in him [Charles Darwin], and I can remember the way he would say, "I shan't be easy till I have tried it," as if an outside force were driving him. He enjoyed experimenting much more than work which only entailed reasoning, and when he was engaged on one of his books which required argument and the marshalling of facts, he felt experimental work to be a rest or holiday.

It's the nature of man to ask questions. --Belgarath

I am myself by inclination an investigator.

By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream

There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.

It is frequently more rewarding merely to ask pertinent questions. It may get someone to go and look for an answer.

I often pose questions to myself and want the answers. The questions may be psychological or emotional. Or they may involve botany or [...] physiology. [...] I am very curious about strangers I observe - as in a bus line. I am very attached to finding out answers.

[Science is] a great game. It is inspiring and refreshing. The playing field is the universe itself.

I don't write books because I have answers. I write books because I have questions. What we are is the questions that we ask, not the answers that we provide. It's all about the process of self-examination. I think that's what the best writing always contains.

Never stop doubting , never stop questioning, never ever assume you have all the answers. Having all the answers kills the question itself, renders it lifeless.....an d you too. Keep looking, keep seeking. Never, ever find it all. Because when you find it all, you deny that there is more. And there is never not more.