Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.
Alan AldaRead
I was always interested in figuring things out. I'd do experiments, like combining things I found around the house to see what would happen if I put them together.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Curiosity and experimentation drive discovery and learning.
This quote by Alan Alda reflects the spirit of curiosity and the importance of hands-on experimentation in understanding the world. It emphasizes that by engaging with our surroundings and conducting our own experiments, we can gain valuable insights and knowledge, which is foundational to scientific thinking and innovation.
Themes
CuriosityExperimentationLearningDiscoveryScience
In practice
Example use cases
During a science fair, I shared a quote about curiosity to inspire young minds.
More from Alan Alda
All quotes βBegin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.
Alan AldaRead
Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself.
Alan AldaRead
Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.
Alan AldaRead
If you know what you're looking for, that's all you'll get - what's previously known. But when you're open to what's possible, you get something new - that's creativity.
Alan AldaRead
I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.
Alan AldaRead
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And as for other men, who worked in tank-rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,-sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out into the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard! This contributed to the passing of the Pure Food Act of 1906.
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When the problem [quantum chromodynamics] is finally solved, it will all be by imagination. Then there will be some big thing about the great way it was done. But it's simple -it will all be by imagination, and persistence.
Richard P. FeynmanRead
New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise: So pleas'd at first, the towring Alps we try.
Alexander PopeRead
It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.
Francis CrickRead