There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite hundreds of pop lyrics and reel off any amount of information about footballers, cars and celebrities. Why? Because they are interested in those things. They are curious. If you are hungry for food you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same. Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history. You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.Ah, yes. But time? Where can I find the time...
Picture the world as being a city whose pavements are covered a foot deep in gold coins. You have to wade through them to make progress. Their clinking and rattling fills the air. Imagine that you met a beggar in such a city.
‘Please, give me something. I am penniless.’
‘But look around you,’ you would shout. ‘There is gold enough to last you your whole life. All you have to do is to bend down and pick it up!’
When people complain that they don’t know any literature because it was badly taught at school, or that they missed out on history because on the timetable it was either that or biology, or some such ludicrous excuse, it is hard not to react in the same way.
‘But it’s all around you!’ I want to scream. ‘All you have to do is bend down and pick it up!’ - Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles
Friday, June 28, 2013
A bit more Stephen, 'cause it's relevant.
I am just itching to open this book on finance, but I'm busy with other intern-stuff today at work - and I can't wait to read that, I can't wait to study for the GRE for goodness' sake, because it's stuff I'm interested in - and all of this nerdliness reminded me of another great quote:
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