To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with...

The ability to retain a child’s view of the world with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare – and a person who has these...

Reading is like skiing. When done well, when done by an expert, both reading and skiing are graceful, harmonious, activities. When done by a beginner, both are awkward, frustrating, and slow. Learning to ski is...

A lecture has been well described as the process whereby the notes of the teacher become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either.

If a book is easy and fits nicely into all your language conventions and thought forms, then you probably will not grow much from reading it. It may be entertaining, but not enlarging to your...

If your friend wishes to read your ‘Plutarch’s Lives,’ ‘Shakespeare,’ or ‘The Federalist Papers,’ tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat – but your...

true.” If he cannot do this by himself, he is obliged to go to someone who can. This may be a priest or a rabbi, or it may be his superior in the party hierarchy,...

The beauty of any work of art is related to the pleasure it gives us when we know it well.

True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business.

Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement...

Books are absent teachers.

… a practical problem can only be solved by action itself. When your practical problem is how to earn a living, a book on how to make friends and influence people cannot solve it, though...

The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions – simple once they are stated, vastly...

76.David Hume – Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding77.Jean-Jacques Rousseau – On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile – or, On Education, The Social Contract78.Laurence...

We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few.

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.

Think of yourself as a detective looking for clues to a book’s general theme or idea, alert for anything that will make it clearer. Heeding the suggestions we have made will help you sustain this...

The best protection against propaganda of any sort is the recognition of it for what it is. Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind is...

There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception.

121.George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces122.Max Planck – Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography123.Henri Bergson – Time and Free Will; Matter and Memory; Creative Evolution; The Two...

… always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.

….a good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser. Not just more knowledgeable – books...

In short, we can only learn from our “betters”.

We are not told, or not told early enough so that it sinks in, that mathematics is a language, and that we can learn it like any other, including our own. We have to learn...

Television, radio, and all the sources of amusement and information that surround us in our daily lives are also artificial props. They can give us the impression that our minds are active, because we are...