September 13, 2025
If I had to pick between curiosity and intelligence, I’d take curiosity every single time. And not just because curiosity makes life more fun (although it does). Intelligence is useful, it helps you calculate the tip on a dinner bill without pulling out your phone, or know which side of the hammer to hold, but curiosity is the thing that gets you asking why does the tip matter in the first place?
Intelligence can give you polished answers, but curiosity is what generates the questions that make life worth exploring. Without curiosity, intelligence sits on the shelf like a dusty encyclopedia set. With curiosity, even an average mind can uncover new worlds.
In my own life, I’ve seen this play out in funny ways. My kids will ask me things like, Do cats dream about us? Can you eat a cloud? Why does the moon follow us home? These are not “intelligent” questions in the traditional sense, they don’t have neat, testable answers. But they are curious questions, and they make me stop and think about things I otherwise would have ignored. They pull me out of autopilot.
The truth is, intelligence without curiosity can be arrogant or closed-off. It assumes it already knows enough. But curiosity? Curiosity never stops. It’s humble. It’s willing to look foolish just to find out. And yes, sometimes that means going down rabbit holes on the internet at 2 a.m. researching whether penguins have knees (they do, by the way). But it also means being alive to the wonder of the world.
So if I had to choose, curiosity wins hands down. Intelligence is a fine thing to have, but curiosity is the spark that makes it glow.
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So… What’s more important, curiosity or intelligence?
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