From The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry
The danger is not that curiosity dies with age, but that we let it be buried under the weight of what we think we already know. Children ask questions about everything because they know they know nothing. Adults stop asking because they believe they have learned enough. This is a kind of death that precedes the physical one. My method: I kept lists of questions I wanted to answer. Why is the sky blue? How do birds fly? What causes the moon to shine? Some questions I answered through study and experiment. Others remained open my whole life. The list never grew shorter — each answer spawned new questions. Seek out people who know more than you in some domain, and be willing to learn from anyone. I learned from artists, engineers, anatomists, musicians, mathematicians — and from peasants who knew how rivers behaved better than any scholar. Take up new disciplines, especially ones that seem unrelated to your primary work. When I was well established as a painter, I threw myself into anatomy, then architecture, then military engineering. Each new field refreshed my seeing in the others. Be willing to look foolish. The person too proud to ask basic questions will never learn anything new. I asked "stupid" questions constantly — and found that the questions were not stupid at all. Travel if you can, not as a tourist but as a student. See how other people solve problems, build buildings, organize their lives. Familiarity breeds not contempt but blindness. And remember: You will die having learned only the smallest fraction of what there is to know. This is not tragedy — it is invitation. The universe offers infinite fascination. All you must do is accept.
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