Some quotes:

"Thinking is hard work. If my students are any guide, many have never experienced working to their maximum (except on standardized tests) so do not even know what they are capable of until pushed."

Linda S. Gottfredson

"If our professions do not allow us to devote more than two hours a day to a subject, do not abandon the work on the pretext that we need four or six. As Payot wisely noted, 'A little each day is enough, as long as a little is produced each day.' "

Santiago Ramon y Cajal

"I have always fiercly defended the position that we should base our view of the world on the state of our knowledge, on fact, and not on what we would like it to be."

James Watson

"no matter who your are, your joie de vivre mostly derives from paying attention to someone or something that interests you."

Winifred Gallagher

"Almost anything can be interesting once. Only a few things ever become endlessly fascinating, and nothing is endlessly fascinating for everyone."

Paul Silvia

"Every organism, whether a bacterium or a member of Homo sapiens, has a set of things in the world that matter to it and which it (therefore) needs to discriminate and anticipate as best it can."

Daniel C. Dennett

"we don't actually go to art for information. The information content is not the primary thing. It's the experience."

Roger Scruton

"because when you start getting bored without constant external stimulation, that's when stuff starts coming up from the inside[.]"

John Cleese

"The key, Paul [Silvia] explained, is that novelty for the beginner comes in one form, and novelty for the expert in another. For the beginner, novelty is anything that hasn't been encountered before. For the expert, novelty is nuance."

Angela Duckworth

"So I discovered early on if you want anything you went for it and you got it. And most people don't ever go anywhere or want anything, so they never get anything."

Ray Bradbury

"But thinking is to be a corrective in our life, it's not supposed to be the center of our lives. Living is supposed to be the center of our lives."

Ray Bradbury

"when a man talks from his heart, in his moment of truth, he speaks poetry."

Ray Bradbury

"The PE is therefore a signal that states: 'This is good stuff, by your standards - maybe the best you are capable of, under current circumstances. Don't ignore it, don't forget it, and try to understand it'."

Bruce Charlton

"the physical universe has structure, and one’s perceptions of this structure, one’s partiality to some of its characteristics and aversion to others, are precisely the elements that make up one’s taste."

Chen Ning Yang