It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. And to ask the right question is already to know the direction of the answer.

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path, to be overcome by its strangeness and wonder.

We are under a heavy debt to those who first broke the crust of ignorance, even though what they discovered may be of no direct use to us. It is not the finding but the seeking that is most consequential.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit — yet habit itself is the enemy of wonder, and wonder is the beginning of philosophy.

The universe is not indifferent to intelligence; it simply has not yet been asked the right questions. But the asking itself changes both the asker and the universe.

We are beginning to see that to ask what is the use of science is as vulgar as to ask what is the use of a sunset, and almost as stupid.

We must not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. Decadence begins when questions are suppressed and we are left only with the comfort of old replies.

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and ask for explanations of certain kinds of things. Any answer to a question which does not ask or explain the right kind of thing will be philosophically frustrated and dull.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are angered by their absence and impatient of delay in their arrival. It is the absence of the phenomena, not their presence, which is the true cause of the intellectual excitement we feel.

The true function of philosophy is not to provide final answers, but to keep alive in us the sense of wonder at the world and our place in it.

The best thing you can do is to get really good at something that is valuable to the market. And the way to get really good at something is to practice it obsessively, but you have to pick something that you have genuine curiosity about.