This paper presents a brief authors frame – Heraclitus, Montaigne and Marx, among others – which constituted sources for Edgar Morin, having played an important role in his formation, and that may also point the way for the formation task of our students, not only by means of instructional processes, but due to mobilizing reflection dynamics of thinking that appear as question forces on the human condition. Complex thought was nourished by various philosophical questions that can be intertwined with romance, poetry and cinema, which, by exposing human complexities, meet the curiosity that always prompted Morin. It is a knowledge which proposes the discussion of opposites and contradictions as complementary and inseparable, and points to the importance of dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]