On Thinking for Oneself
This is why much reading robs the mind of all elasticity; it is like keeping a spring under a continuous, heavy weight. If a man does not want to think, the safest plan is to take up a book directly he has a spare moment.
Arthur Schopenhauer • The Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics)
So why is reading books any better than reading tweets or wall posts? Well, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, you need to put down your book, if only to think about what you’re reading, what you think about what you’re reading. But a book has two advantages over a tweet. First, the person who wrote it thought about it a lot more carefully. The book is... See more
William Deresiewicz • Solitude and Leadership
When I hear of these portents of learning and their imposing erudition, I sometimes say to myself: Ah, how little they must have had to think about, to have been able to read so much!
Arthur Schopenhauer • The Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics)
Too much importance cannot be attached to this quality of seeing things for oneself; it is the stamp of a great and original mind; it is the principal quality of what one calls genius.
Arthur Schopenhauer • Works of Arthur Schopenhauer
Every one has aims, but very few have anything approaching a system of thought. This is why such people do not take an objective interest in anything, and why they learn nothing from what they read: they remember nothing about it.