Hunter S. Thompson Quotes

Our children are weird. Nicely phrased.

Curiosity in children, is but an appetite for knowledge. The great reason why children abandon themselves wholly to silly pursuits and trifle away their time insipidly is, because they find their curiosity balked, and their inquiries neglected.

The great questions are those an intelligent child asks and, getting no answers, stops asking.

We relate to Leonardo da Vinci because his genius was just being passionately curious about everything. He wanted to know everything he could know about our universe, including how we fit into it. We can't all have a superhuman intellect like Albert Einstein's, but we can be super-curious. And we can also quit smashing curiosity out of the hands our children.

Children are born true scientists. They spontaneously experiment and experience and reexperience again. They select, combine, and test, seeking to find order in their experiences - "which is the mostest? which is the leastest?" They smell, taste, bite, and touch-test for hardness, softness, springiness, roughness, smoothness, coldness, warmness: they heft, shake, punch, squeeze, push, crush, rub, and try to pull things apart.

The way a child discovers the world constantly replicates the way science began. You start to notice what's around you, and you get very curious about how things work. How things interrelate. It's as simple as seeing a bug that intrigues you. You want to know where it goes at night; who its friends are; what it eats.

There exists a passion for comprehension, just as there exists a passion for music. That passion is rather common in children, but gets lost in most people later on. Without this passion there would be neither mathematics nor natural science.

I definitely do weird things every show.

I was the youngest child. I got to be myself and ask stupid questions because I was the youngest. It is so important to listen to the questions children have and reward them for the wondrous questions they ask.

Children are very smart, in their own stupid way. A child's brain is like a sponge, and you know how smart sponges are.

I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious.

Young children have no sense of wonder. They bewilder well, but few things surprise them. All of it is new to young children, after all, and equally gratuitous.

I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a very powerful emotion. All children feel it. In a first grade classroom everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or at least acknowledges it. Something happens between first and twelfth grade, and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.

Curiosity in children ... is but an appetite after knowledge and therefore ought to be encouraged in them, not only as a good sign, but as the great instrument nature has provided to remove that ignorance they were born with and which, without this busy inquisitiveness, will make them dull and useless creatures.

I'm always struck by how innately curious kids are about the world around us and how engaged and sensitive they are to what is happening .. and how many kids do want to be engaged and do what to make a difference.

Real children do not go hoppity skip unless they are on drugs.

What I have learned from my own experience is that the most important ingredients in a child's education are curiosity, interest, imagination, and a sense of the adventure of life.

The most important thing is actually raising up children with a true and lasting burning sense of curiosity. I don't even know how they do it. Good parents are a marvel.

Curiosity is unknown. All adults were once kids and once curious, but as adults you don't remember that and you see curiosity when it's expressed in children as a pathway to household disaster. They're simply exploring their environment, manifesting their curiosity. So what you need to do is create an environment where curiosity is rewarded rather than punished, or thwarted.

Asking doesn't mean you lack wisdom - it's evidence of wisdom.

Don't you make fun of me or my children! Some babies are premature. Mine were all postmature. That's why they're so smart. Their brains had longer to develop.

A child is a discoverer. He is an amorphous, splendid being in search of his own proper form.

We're in a world now where it's not enough to be smart. You have to be curious.

You know," Daddy said, "it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!

Yes, it is true that sometimes unusually intelligent and sensitive children can appear to be stupid. But stupid children can sometimes appear to be stupid as well. I think that's something you might have to consider.