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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No isolated experiment, however significant in itself, can suffice for the experimental demonstration of any natural phenomenon; for the "one chance in a million" will undoubtedly occur, with no less and no more than its appropriate frequency, however surprised we may be that it should occur to us.
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What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.
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At lunch Francis [Crick] winged into the Eagle to tell everyone within hearing distance that we had found the secret of life.
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