Echoes

The world will hardly admit of an excuse for a man leaving a coast unexplored he has once discovered.

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

All men by nature desire to know.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

People often say that I'm curious about too many things at once. But can you really forbid a man from harboring a desire to know and embrace everything that surrounds him?

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

Learning never exhausts the mind.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity. ... Don't stop to marvel.

He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer sight to almost everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.

Every solution of a problem raises new unsolved problems; the more so the deeper the original problem and the bolder its solution. The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance.

I believe it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be not to explore at all.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

In prosecuting these discoveries, the dangers we are exposed to are obvious, but I rejoice that we are chosen to confront them.

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Every generation has the obligation to free men's minds for a look at new worlds… to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.

It isn't all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's there are few.

Admiration is the foundation of all philosophy, inquisition the progress, ignorance the end.

The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.

Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her.

A part of good science is to see what everyone else can see but think what no one else has ever said.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.