"The game was that of continually inventing a possible world, or a piece of a possible world, and then of comparing it with the real world... a race without end... What mattered more than the answers were the questions... For me, this world of questions and the provisional, this chase after an answer that was always put off to the next day, all that was euphoric. I lived in the future... I had turned my anxiety into my profession."
-- Nobel Laureate Physician-Microbiologist Francois Jacob

"Do not stop to think about the reason for what you are doing, about why you are 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 structures of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity."

"It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of teaching have not yet entirely strangled that 
sacred spirit of curiosity and inquiry, for this delicate plant needs freedom no less than stimulation."

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

-- Nobel Laureate Albert Einstein

"As far as I can remember, it was very rarely that I found the answer to any one of my problems by conscious thinking. This conscious thinking only acted as a primer for my brain, which seemed to work much better without my muddling when I was asleep or fishing. I think that without such concentration and devotion, nothing can be achieved, be it in art or science. When Newton was asked how he made his discoveries, he replied: 'by always thinking into them.'"

"Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen but understanding it for the first time..."

-- Nobel Laureate Albert Szent-Gyoygyi

"Our schools offer no conception of the scientific process of discovery. They do not encourage creative thought, in fact, they stifle it through too much rigidity in teaching. If we set out to give as little help as possible to originality in science, we could hardly devise a better plan than our education system. Youngsters ought to be told what is unknown about ourselves and our universe as well as what is known."
-- Nobel Laureate Chemist William M. Lipscomb

"You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things... 
It doesn't frighten me."
-- Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman

"It is the mountain of the unknown that spurs scientific process... our progress is impeded by 
true ignorance: lack of familiarity with that which is known and lack of comprehension of the need for -- and the very nature of -- the process of biomedical research."
-- Nobel Laureate Thomas Weller

"I was a bad practicing physician because I was never sure of the diagnosis or of the treatment."
-- Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg

"We must educate people on what nobody knew yesterday and prepare people in our schools for what no one knows yet, but what some people must know tomorrow."
-- Margaret Mead

"No king or minister could have instructed Newton to discover the law of gravity, for they did not know and could not know that there was such a law to discover. No Treasury official told Fleming to discover penicillin. Nor was Rutherford instructed to split the atom by a certain date..."
-- Northcote Parkinson

"Current intelligence-testing practices require examinees to answer but not to pose questions. In requiring only the answering of questions, these tests are missing a vital half of intelligence- - 
the asking of questions..."
-- Robert J. Sternberg

"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
-- Thomas Henry Huxley

"Accept ignorance; pay more attention to the question than the answer; never be afraid to go in the opposite direction."
-- Richard Saul Wurman

"Judge a man by his questions and not by his logic."
-- Voltaire

"Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge."
-- Alfred North Whitehead

"The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts 
as to discover new ways of thinking about them."
-- Sir William Bragg

"The challenge for all us who want to improve education is to create an educational system that exploits the natural curiosity of children, so that they maintain their motivation for learning not only through their school years but throughout life. We need to convince teachers and parents of the importance of children's 'why' questions."
-- National Research Council, Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards, 2000 

"Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance."
-- Sydney J. Harris

"A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere."
-- Charles F. Kettering

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
-- Will Durant

"The single most important concept I have incorporated into my life is the courage to question established protocols... if that (out-dated) ideology had been upheld, then we would still be doing bloodletting on a flat planet whose sun orbits it."
-- Hulon Hayes, UA medical student and 2002 SIMI participant

"A lot of people tend to sometimes skip the questions, it sounds simple because they figure they have already been answered, but have they really? I conclude with this... ignorance is an important factor. 
If everyone could admit this, we would live in a better world."
-- Carlos A. Chacon, 1992 SIMI participant, now a first-year medical student at the UA