Curiosity has always been a very important factor in my life—about all subjects. It’s a thirst for knowledge. I have a standard motto and it’s very short: “A good education and a kind heart will serve you well throughout your entire life.” The more you know, the more knowledge you acquire, the better off you are in dealing with other people—the more you develop an understanding for other people.
If you know geography, for instance, you learn why a certain civilization settled in one location as opposed to another location twenty miles away. They settled here because they discovered there was salt in the ground. They settled there because there was water and fish. There’s a natural order to the way the world has become populated.
That natural order unfortunately has been overtaken by man’s interference in setting up all kinds of international boundaries. We have drawn boundaries that make it difficult to achieve peace. And that’s unfortunate. It’s man’s hubris. It’s man’s arrogance—that he knows best where these boundaries should be formed. Little by little we make mistakes, and we keep compounding those mistakes, and expanding on them to the point where you can’t get people to agree anymore. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t take the time to educate themselves. They don’t put in the effort.
As I tell studio audiences, you are never too old to learn. There’s a thrill connected to curiosity. Because curiosity leads to discovery. And there’s a thrill that comes with discovery. “I didn’t know that! Jeez, how about that?!” Somebody on staff just gave me a copy of National Geographic magazine from July of 1940, which is the month in which I was born. I’ve got it right here on my desk and have been leafing through it. One of the main articles is about the construction of the new National Gallery of Art in Washington. And the facade, the article says, is wider than the facade of the Capitol Building. So I thought, Boy, that’s interesting. That’s a pretty big building. I also learned that the dome of the National Gallery was modeled after the Pantheon in Rome.
Now, am I ever going to use that knowledge? Probably not. But even if you are learning facts that you are not going to be able to use in your daily life, it enriches you—the fact itself just enriches you as a human being and broadens your outlook on life and makes you a more understanding and better person. And as Martha Stewart would say, “That’s a good thing.”