"We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself"
About this Quote
Curiosity becomes most useful right at the moment it’s denied a reward. Lloyd Alexander’s line argues, quietly but firmly, against the idea that knowledge is a neat transaction: question in, answer out, lesson learned. Instead, he’s praising the friction of not-knowing-the state where you’re forced to map the boundaries of a problem, test your assumptions, and notice what you don’t even have language for yet. The failed search is not a waste; it’s a diagnostic.
Alexander wrote fantasy for young readers, a genre built on quests, detours, and the kind of moral education that happens when plans collapse. That background matters. In a good quest story, the treasure isn’t the object at the end but the altered person who arrives there. This sentence lifts that narrative logic into a philosophy of learning: the plot twist is that the missing answer is the teacher.
The subtext is a critique of certainty as a status symbol. Answers can become trophies, easily memorized, easily repeated, easily used to end conversation. Not finding the answer keeps the conversation alive, makes you humble, makes you inventive. It trains you to sit with ambiguity without turning it into panic or performance.
Read in today’s context of search bars and instant explanations, the quote lands like a small rebuke. When information is abundant, the rare skill is not retrieval but endurance: the patience to keep asking better questions after the first, easiest answer fails.
Alexander wrote fantasy for young readers, a genre built on quests, detours, and the kind of moral education that happens when plans collapse. That background matters. In a good quest story, the treasure isn’t the object at the end but the altered person who arrives there. This sentence lifts that narrative logic into a philosophy of learning: the plot twist is that the missing answer is the teacher.
The subtext is a critique of certainty as a status symbol. Answers can become trophies, easily memorized, easily repeated, easily used to end conversation. Not finding the answer keeps the conversation alive, makes you humble, makes you inventive. It trains you to sit with ambiguity without turning it into panic or performance.
Read in today’s context of search bars and instant explanations, the quote lands like a small rebuke. When information is abundant, the rare skill is not retrieval but endurance: the patience to keep asking better questions after the first, easiest answer fails.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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