The question

What makes you want to keep learning?

Originally asked

Vox, to writers and thinkers, 9 Questions, 2017

This exact prompt is one of Vox's nine recurring questions about intellectual habits.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

John Lewis

U.S. Representative from Georgia, 1987–2020; Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1963–1966

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
I wanted to know. I asked a lot of questions and she would say, "Read, read."…So she inspired me a great deal.

Julian Bond, Explorations in Black Leadership interview, Explorations in Black Leadership, University of Virginia source ↗

Others on this question

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Winston Churchill Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1940–1945 and 1951–1955; Member of Parliament 1900–1964
At this school I was allowed to learn things which interested me: French, History, lots of Poetry by heart, and above all Riding and Swimming. The impression of those years makes a pleasant picture in my mind, in strong contrast to my earlier schoolday memories.
Recorded Chapter of his autobiography, written at Chartwell in 1930, Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life (Thornton Butterworth, 1930), Project Gutenberg Canada, October 1930 source ↗
Steve Jobs Co-founder and chief executive of Apple; co-founder of NeXT; chief executive of Pixar
One of the saints in my life is this woman named Imogene Hill, who was a fourth-grade teacher who taught this advanced class. She got hip to my whole situation in about a month and kindled a passion in me for learning things. I learned more that year than I think I learned in any year in school.
Recorded David Sheff, Playboy Interview, February 1985 source ↗
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Developmental biologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1995
I think a very big curiosity. I’m very curious and I like to understand things and not only science but also other things where I just try to find out why things work or how things work. Science and nature caught my attention as a small child already. I was growing up in a city but we had a garden and I loved the garden and then often on vacation I was at a farm and I loved these animals and plants and so on, so I was attracted very early on and then we had a very good teaching actually at my … I don’t know whether my teachers really had much of a role because I was determined very early, but then I also did music and I did languages and Literature and so on. I have broad interests actually other than science, but this is really true, this curiosity.
Recorded Marika Griehsel, Interview at the 53rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, 30 June–4 July 2003, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 July 2003 source ↗
David Vélez Co-founder and chief executive of Nubank
I wish I knew more about Clojure, which is the programming language we use most at Nubank. If I did, I could better understand some of the more complex problems we're trying to solve, and I think I could ask better questions when we're setting priorities. I'd like to be able to communicate at that level with the technical side of our team, and I think they would appreciate it, too.
Recorded questionnaire, Sequoia Capital, 15 August 2018 source ↗

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Winston Churchill, Desmond Tutu, Richard Feynman, Steve Jobs, David Vélez, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard

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