We all have an inner genius just waiting to be unlocked. For some people, this might come easier than for others. But no matter who you are, or what your creative block may be, childlike wonder can help get you there.

These quotes about childlike wonder illustrate the importance of retaining a sense of awe and curiosity throughout life, and will inspire you to tap into your inner genius to create something truly magical.

Quotes About Childlike Wonder

Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man’s physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.

Charles Baudelaire

I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.

Bill Bryson

Don’t complain; just work harder.

Randy Pausch

Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.

Dalai Lama

Enter the writing process with a childlike sense of wonder and discovery. Let it surprise you.

Charles Ghigna

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.

Alfred North Whitehead

Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.

Albert Einstein

I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.

John Steinbeck

But that’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.

Bill Bryson

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

Albert Einstein

All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes.

Henry David Thoreau

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.

Neil Armstrong

People who get into animation tend to be kids. We don’t have to grow up. But also, animators are great observers, and there’s this childlike wonder and interest in the world, the observation of little things that happen in life.

John Lasseter

You were wild once. Don’t let them tame you.

Isadora Duncan

The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

William Butler Yeats

Every child begins the world again.

Henry David Thoreau

Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.

E.B. White

My best teachers were not the ones who knew all the answers, but those who were deeply excited by the questions they could not answer.

Brian Greene

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

Charlie Chaplin

Laughter is the currency of hope.

Viktor Frankl

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

Socrates

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

Francis Bacon

Unless we can be like children, we can’t be happy.

Marianne Williamson

Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.

Alfred North Whitehead

I am realistic – I expect miracles.

Wayne Dyer

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age.

Aldous Huxley

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.

John Ruskin

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination!

Albert Einstein

There are two things that don’t have to mean anything; one is music, and the other is laughter.

Immanuel Kant

Give children toys that are powered by their imagination, not by batteries.

H. Jackson Brown

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.

Gerry Spence

Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.

Hans Christian Andersen

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.

George Eliot

The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is important to remember that we all have magic inside us.

J. K. Rowling

Only those who look with the eyes of children can lose themselves in the object of their wonder.

Eberhard Arnold

Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever.

Walt Disney

All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.

Orison Swett Marden

Everything that now exists was once imagined. So, if you want something to exist, you must first be able to imagine it.

Wayne Dyer

Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts; the sight of the deep blue sky and the clustering stars above seems to impart a quiet to the mind.

Tryon Edwards

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

Albert Einstein

A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.

J.R.R. Tolkien

May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The imagination is the golden pathway to everywhere.

Terence McKenna

We must be careful not to wonder about something in a way that we are unchanged by the wonder.

Stephen Jenkinson

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

H. L. Mencken

What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever.

Mary Jo Putney

Children…are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth.

E.B. White

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.

Dr. Seuss

The child realizes to every man his own earliest remembrance, and so supplies a defect in our education, or enables us to live over the unconscious history with a sympathy so tender as to be almost personal experience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions. Occasionally, I find an answer.

Stephen Hawking

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

John Updike

I don’t dream at night, I dream all day; I dream for a living.

Steven Spielberg

Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.

Henry David Thoreau

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.

Lord Byron

We all need empty hours in our lives or we will have no time to create or dream.

Robert Coles

The real magic wand is the child’s own mind.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract thinking.

Albert Einstein

The child sees everything in a state of newness; he is always drunk. Nothing more resembles what we call inspiration than the delight with which a small child absorbs form and colour.

Charles Baudelaire

We’re all five-year-olds. We don’t know how to do this thing called life. Are you faking it?

Byron Katie

When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero.

Fred Rogers

Every child born into the world is a new thought of God, an ever fresh and radiant possibility.

Kate Douglas Wiggin

Children remind us to treasure the smallest of gifts, even in the most difficult of times.

Allen Klein

Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.

Lewis Carroll

Laughter is like the human body wagging its tail.

Anne Wilson Schaef

There is little success where there is little laughter.

Andrew Carnegie

I don’t plan before I color.

Wendy MacNaughton

To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.

Pablo Picasso

A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

Albert Einstein

I was like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell…whilst the great ocean of truth lay before me.

Isaac Newton

‪The pursuit of beauty and truth is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

Albert Einstein‬

[The great artist is one] who is never for a moment without the genius of childhood — a genius for which no aspect of life has become stale… master of that only too difficult art — sensitive spirits will understand me — of being sincere without being absurd.

Charles Baudelaire

Parting Words

A sense of wonder is the birthplace of genius. As we get older, it’s all too easy to let the cynicism of the world dampen our spirits and squash our creativity. But if we want to continue to grow and learn, we need to find a way to keep that sense of wonder alive.

Fortunately, quotes about childlike wonder can help us do just that. They remind us that being open to new experiences and seeing the world with fresh eyes is essential for keeping our minds sharp and unlocking our inner genius.

What’s your favorite quote about childlike wonder? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts on how these wise words have helped you stay curious and creative throughout your life.

P.S. You might also like these related quote collections:

• Quotes About Curiosity
• Quotes About Memories
• Quotes About Exploration
• Quotes About Simplicity
• Quotes About Imagination

Originally Published: October 28, 2022

  Lima, Peru

The post Quotes About Childlike Wonder to Unlock Your Inner Genius appeared first on Flâneur Life.