“What we do, if we are successful, is to stir interest in the matter at hand, awaken enthusiasm for it, arouse a curiosity, kindle a feeling, fire up the imagination.”

— Julius Sumner Miller

Julius Sumner Miller, in What Science Teaching Needs, Junior college journal, volume 38 (1967), by American Association of Junior Colleges, Stanford University.
Context: My view is this: We teach nothing. We do not teach physics nor do we teach students. (I take physics merely as an example.) What is the same thing: No one is taught anything! Here lies the folly of this business. We try to teach somebody nothing. This is a sorry endeavour for no one can be taught a thing.
What we do, if we are successful, is to stir interest in the matter at hand, awaken enthusiasm for it, arouse a curiosity, kindle a feeling, fire up the imagination. To my own teachers who handled me in this way, I owe a great and lasting debt.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What we do, if we are successful, is to stir interest in the matter at hand, awaken enthusiasm for it, arouse a curiosi…" by Julius Sumner Miller?

Julius Sumner Miller 7

American physicist 1909–1987

Related quotes

“I know also that still more interesting discoveries will be made that I have not the imagination to describe — and I am awaiting them, full of curiosity and enthusiasm.”

Linus Pauling (1901–1994) American scientist

Lecture at Yale University, "Chemical Achievement and Hope for the Future." (October 1947) Published in Science in Progress. Sixth Series. Ed. George A. Baitsell. 100-21, (1949).
1940s-1960s
Context: Science cannot be stopped. Man will gather knowledge no matter what the consequences – and we cannot predict what they will be. Science will go on — whether we are pessimistic, or are optimistic, as I am. I know that great, interesting, and valuable discoveries can be made and will be made… But I know also that still more interesting discoveries will be made that I have not the imagination to describe — and I am awaiting them, full of curiosity and enthusiasm.

“We cannot kindle when we will
The fire that in the heart resides”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

"Morality" (1852), st. 1
Context: We cannot kindle when we will
The fire that in the heart resides,
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides; —
But tasks, in hours of insight willed,
Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.

“Most people have very little imagination. They are hardly moved by anything which does not directly touch them, which does not positively hammer its message upon their senses; but even a trifle, should it happen under their very eyes, and within the immediate range of their feelings, will instantly kindle in them a disproportionate amount of passion. We may say that the rarity of their interest is compensated by an inappropriate and exaggerated vehemence when their interest is at last aroused.”

Stefan Zweig book Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927)

“Wind, earthquake, fire—meteorology, seismology, physics—pass in review, as we have been reviewing the natural forces of evolution; the Lord was not in them. Afterwards, a stirring, an awakening in the organ of the brain, a voice which asks "What doest thou here?"”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

“his mysterious resources had awakened in her a curiosity that was difficult to resist, but she had never imagined that curiosity was one of the many masks of love.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”

John Muir book My First Summer in the Sierra

Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 195
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869

“But whether it be dream or truth, to do well is what matters. If it be truth, for truth's sake. If not, then to gain friends for the time when we awaken.”

Pedro Calderón de la Barca Life is a Dream

Mas, sea verdad o sueño,
obrar bien es lo que importa.
Si fuere verdad, por serlo;
si no, por ganar amigos
para cuando despertemos.
Segismundo, Act III, l. 236.
La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream)