Question:
Passage:
The world dismisses curiosity by calling it idle or mere idle curiosity even though curious persons are seldom idle. Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children because it makes life difficult to be faced everyday with a string of unanswerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline are invited to join our university. Within the university, they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is what a university is for. Some of the questions which the scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking, let alone answering. They ask questions too minute and specialized for you and me to understand without years of explanation. If the world inquires one of them why he wants to know the answer to a particular question he may say, especially if he is a scientist, that the answer will in some obscure way make possible a new machine or weapon or gadget. He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility.
But to you who are now part of the university, he will say that he wants to know the answer simply because he does not know it, the way the mountain climber wants to climb a mountain, simply because it is there. Similarly a historian asked by an outsider why he studies history may come out with the argument that he has learnt to respect to report on such occasions, something about knowledge of the past making it possible to understand the present and mould the future. But if you really want to know why a historian studies the past, the answer is much simpler, something happened and he would like to know what. It is true that scholars can be put to work answering questions for sake of the consequences as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary for scholars. For the consequences are usually subordinate to the satisfaction of curiosity.
Question:
It may be inferred from the passage that curiosity
Passage:
The world dismisses curiosity by calling it idle or mere idle curiosity even though curious persons are seldom idle. Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children because it makes life difficult to be faced everyday with a string of unanswerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline are invited to join our university. Within the university, they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is what a university is for. Some of the questions which the scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking, let alone answering. They ask questions too minute and specialized for you and me to understand without years of explanation. If the world inquires one of them why he wants to know the answer to a particular question he may say, especially if he is a scientist, that the answer will in some obscure way make possible a new machine or weapon or gadget. He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility.
But to you who are now part of the university, he will say that he wants to know the answer simply because he does not know it, the way the mountain climber wants to climb a mountain, simply because it is there. Similarly a historian asked by an outsider why he studies history may come out with the argument that he has learnt to respect to report on such occasions, something about knowledge of the past making it possible to understand the present and mould the future. But if you really want to know why a historian studies the past, the answer is much simpler, something happened and he would like to know what. It is true that scholars can be put to work answering questions for sake of the consequences as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary for scholars. For the consequences are usually subordinate to the satisfaction of curiosity.
Question:
It may be inferred from the passage that curiosity
The world dismisses curiosity by calling it idle or mere idle curiosity even though curious persons are seldom idle. Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children because it makes life difficult to be faced everyday with a string of unanswerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline are invited to join our university. Within the university, they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is what a university is for. Some of the questions which the scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking, let alone answering. They ask questions too minute and specialized for you and me to understand without years of explanation. If the world inquires one of them why he wants to know the answer to a particular question he may say, especially if he is a scientist, that the answer will in some obscure way make possible a new machine or weapon or gadget. He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility.
But to you who are now part of the university, he will say that he wants to know the answer simply because he does not know it, the way the mountain climber wants to climb a mountain, simply because it is there. Similarly a historian asked by an outsider why he studies history may come out with the argument that he has learnt to respect to report on such occasions, something about knowledge of the past making it possible to understand the present and mould the future. But if you really want to know why a historian studies the past, the answer is much simpler, something happened and he would like to know what. It is true that scholars can be put to work answering questions for sake of the consequences as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary for scholars. For the consequences are usually subordinate to the satisfaction of curiosity.
Question:
It may be inferred from the passage that curiosity
Show Hint
Look at the opening line about curious persons never being idle, and notice what all the examples in the passage (scholars, the mountain climber, the historian) have in common.
Updated On: Jul 20, 2026
- Results in Boredom
- Breeds inefficiency
- Results in action
- Is liked by the society
- Is linked to genes of parents
Show Solution
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The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
The very first line of the passage tells us that "curious persons are seldom idle" - the author is directly rejecting the idea that curiosity is a passive or lazy trait. Everything that follows backs this up with examples of curiosity turning into effort: children keep asking questions and trying to find answers once they reach the university, scholars spend years chasing answers that outsiders find pointless, and the mountain climber wants to climb the mountain simply because it is there. A historian, similarly, studies the past because something happened and he wants to find out what - he goes and does the work of finding out. Even the scientists working toward a cure for cancer are cited as an example of curiosity being put to work. In every case, curiosity is shown driving people into activity and effort, not leaving them idle. That makes option (c), "Results in action," the inference the passage actually supports.
The other options do not hold up. (a) Results in Boredom contradicts the passage outright, since it says curious people are seldom idle, and idleness is closer to boredom than curiosity is. (b) Breeds inefficiency has no support anywhere in the passage; if anything, curiosity is shown producing useful outcomes such as new inventions and medical cures. (d) Is liked by the society is contradicted by the opening lines, which say the world "dismisses" curiosity and that parents try to extinguish it in their children - society does not come across as fond of curiosity here. (e) Is linked to genes of parents is never discussed at all; there is no mention of heredity or genetics in the passage. So (c) remains the only option that is actually inferable from the text.
The other options do not hold up. (a) Results in Boredom contradicts the passage outright, since it says curious people are seldom idle, and idleness is closer to boredom than curiosity is. (b) Breeds inefficiency has no support anywhere in the passage; if anything, curiosity is shown producing useful outcomes such as new inventions and medical cures. (d) Is liked by the society is contradicted by the opening lines, which say the world "dismisses" curiosity and that parents try to extinguish it in their children - society does not come across as fond of curiosity here. (e) Is linked to genes of parents is never discussed at all; there is no mention of heredity or genetics in the passage. So (c) remains the only option that is actually inferable from the text.
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- Passage:
The world dismisses curiosity by calling it idle or mere idle curiosity even though curious persons are seldom idle. Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children because it makes life difficult to be faced everyday with a string of unanswerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline are invited to join our university. Within the university, they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is what a university is for. Some of the questions which the scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking, let alone answering. They ask questions too minute and specialized for you and me to understand without years of explanation. If the world inquires one of them why he wants to know the answer to a particular question he may say, especially if he is a scientist, that the answer will in some obscure way make possible a new machine or weapon or gadget. He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility.
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According to the passage, parents do their best to discourage curiosity in their children, because they - Passage:
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The only way to learn about prehistoric societies is through the study of
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