Question:medium

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 of 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 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 the sake of the consequences, as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary motive for scholars, for the consequences are usually subordinate to the satisfaction of curiosity.

Q56. Pick out the statement, which is true.

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Check each statement against a specific line in the passage; four of them directly contradict what is written.
Updated On: Jul 20, 2026
  • Scientists know that the world understands and respects utility
  • The world encourages curiosity
  • Parents always encourage curiosity of their children
  • In the university questions are rarely asked to find out answers
  • Parents feel good when they are asked questions by their children
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The Correct Option is A

Solution and Explanation

For a "which statement is true" question, the fastest method is to disprove four options with a direct line from the passage and confirm the fifth the same way.

Option (b) fails immediately because the passage's opening line calls the world dismissive of curiosity, not encouraging. Option (c) fails because the text says parents "do their best to extinguish curiosity," the reverse of always encouraging it. Option (d) fails because inside the university people "go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers," meaning questions there are asked precisely to get answers, not rarely. Option (e) has no support anywhere in the passage.

That leaves option (a), which is confirmed word for word by the line: "He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility."

So the answer is (a).

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