Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It

Happiness, he believes, is associated with the realisation that ‘the only interesting things are outside oneself.’

Curiosity is a life force. If depression involves a turning inwards, a feeling that there’s nothing in the world that is worthy of our attention (or that nothing we pay attention to is worthy) then it is curiosity which takes us the other way, that reminds us that the world is an inexhaustibly diverting, inspiring, fascinating place.

Adam Phillips

J.S. Mill

When you live somewhere boring — and we all live somewhere boring — then we have a choice about the way we will see that place. We can spend our days thinking like everyone else, seeing the same things over and over, and never once wondering about how they got that way, or why they stayed that way, or how they could be better. Or, we can learn. And

A puzzle is something that commands our curiosity until we have solved it. A mystery, by contrast, never stops inviting enquiry.

recurring pattern in the history of innovation is the combination of something with its inverse to form a single invention: the clawhammer joined nail removal with nail driving; the pencil was joined with the eraser. By combining the hitherto opposed roles of businessman and hippie, Jobs provided a walking example of the same pattern.

happiness is something that happens to us while we are pursuing some other purpose

Curiosity is likely to lead to better work, but only if it’s allowed time to breathe.