Did you ask a good question?

A few months ago I heard or read someone describe how they became who they are. Today I stumbled on the actual words---as attributed to Isidor I. Rabi, Nobel Laureate in physics, who, when asked why he became a scientist, said:


''My mother made me a scientist without ever intending it. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: 'So? Did you learn anything today?' But not my mother. She always asked me a different question. 'Izzy,' she would say, 'did you ask a good question today?' That difference - asking good questions -made me become a scientist!''