We, Anhui newman fine chemicals co., ltd, a leading manufactruer of  carbomer, learn more from  this speech,I know why Yale is so world-famous.

A Culture of Curiosity

– Speech by Peter Salovey, President of Yale University, at the Yale College Opening Assembly, Class of 2023

August 24, 2019

Good morning! To all Eli Whitney students, transfer students, visiting international students, and first-year Yale College students: Welcome to Yale! On behalf of my colleagues here on stage, I extend a warm greeting to the families here today and thank you all for joining us. Please remember these first moments of your loved one’s college career are very special, and I’m glad you can share them with us today.

Usually in an opening address, university presidents tell undergraduates that they are amazing individuals, selected from the…among the most talented high school students in the world today. This is, of course, true, but it is not the point I want to make. Instead, I want to encourage you to approach college unimpressed by how impressive you are; have more questions than answers; admit to being puzzled or confused; be willing to say, “I don’t know…but I want to find out.” And, most important, have the courage to say, “Perhaps I am wrong, and others are right.”

This is how you will learn the most from your teachers and classmates. And this is why we have all come to this place. We are here to ask questions – questions about one another and about the world around us. We are here at Yale to nurture a culture of curiosity.

Imagine all the great discoveries that have come from asking a question – from Newton’s theory of gravity to the astonishing breakthroughs in quantum science – some of which are happening here at Yale. When a musician experiments with a new melody, or a sociologist observes a social interaction, they ask “why” and “what would happen if…?” Their curiosity lights up our world and points us in new directions. Self-discoveries come from asking questions, too. What do you learn when you ask yourself, “Why do I believe that?” … “Why do I believe that?” or “Why did I do that?”

I think of these lines from the poet Billy Collins: “the trouble with poetry is / that it encourages the writing of more poetry.”

This summer, I read a story about Isidor Isaac Rabi, one of this country’s most extraordinary scientists. He remembered an important question his mother asked him. Brought to this country as an infant, Rabi conducted research into particle beams that led to the development of the MRI and many other scientific advances. And he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944.

Rabi’s parents ran a small grocery store in Brooklyn. His mother had no formal education. The other moms, he remembered, asked their children every afternoon if they had learned anything in school. “Not my mother,” he recalled. “She always asked me a different question. ‘Izzy,’ she would say, ‘did you ask a good question today?’” He believed her reminder to ask good questions helped set him on a path to becoming a distinguished scientist.

So, to all the families here today, when you call your Yale students – when you ask them about their classes and their roommates and the food – remember also to ask them about their questions.