John Muir Quotes

You've had a whole lot of experience, but everything is also radically new at each moment, and you have to bring a kind of childlike second-level innocence to bear upon all situations, if you are going to be of use and you are going to really learn from the situation or the people.

I'm just incredibly interested in people.

People are innately curious.

One of the most responsible things you can do as an adult is to become more of a child.

Sometimes the gift of an inquisitive nature to the young can be greater than that of the wisdom which comes of age.

I think I still keep my sense of wonder, which I call childlike, not childish, childlike. I still have a vivid imagination, and I like to try a lot of new things.

Children always turn towards the light. Oh that grown-up people in this world became like little children!

For me, it's been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I've been amazed at how one idea leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander.

I think we've always, as a species, been fascinated with stuff that we don't understand. Anytime someone can shed light on that, whether it's legit or just somebody's fantasy of what that stuff is, I think people take notice.

I try to convey this feeling of being innocent in a mystical state, being in a place that's new, seeing things with brand new eyes, for better or worse. I just imagine this little kid floating on a beautiful king-size bed over the city at night, seeing all sorts of crazy stuff happening in the world. To me, half the fun is all the stories other people have.

Walt Disney, of all people, did a good job of describing his own netony. "People who have worked with me say I am 'innocence in action,'" he wrote. "They say I have the innocence and unselfconsciousness of a child. Maybe I have. I still look at the world with uncontaminated wonder."

I am - since I was a child - curious about everything. I like to look at how things work and why people are the way they are.

If you are hungry for food, you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same. Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history. You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.

It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing. Of course, there are some people who are innately curious, forever little kids in their awe of life, but they're rare.

Will we go explore? Absolutely. That's what humans have been doing since we left the caves in Ethiopia. Why? Because this is part of our nature. We're curious. We want to push the envelope. That will never stop. We will see people on Mars, hopefully in our lifetime. My hope is that the endeavour is so large, so complex, so technically challenging, so demanding and so uplifting, that it will be done with a consortium of nations. I hope the people who do set foot on Mars will do so for all mankind, and not just one nation in particular.

Why do some people stop growing at age 30, just going from work to the couch and television, when others stay vibrant, curious, almost childlike into their nineties?

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

No matter how sophisticated our lives may be we need to think of ourselves as creative children.

Wonder is very necessary in life. When we're little kids, we're filled with wonder for the world - it's fascinating and miraculous. A lot of people lose that. They become cynical and jaded, especially in modern day society. Magic renews that wonder.

The most important thing is a person. A person who incites your curiosity and feeds your curiosity; and machines cannot do that in the same way that people can.

Try to live with the same intensity as a child. He doesn't ask for explanations; he dives into each day as if it were a new adventure and, at night, sleeps tired and happy.

Warmth, perfume, rugs, soft lights, books. They do not appease me. I am aware of time passing, of all the world contains that I have not seen, of all the interesting people I have not met.

I really like to be by myself and if I do go out to look around, I dress in jeans. My secretary is constantly telling me to dress up, shave and look your best because people know you. That bothers me. I just want to be natural.

...there is a fine line between wishing to produce child-like astonishment and treating people like infants.

Seeing the world through the eyes of a child is the purest joy that anyone can experience.