You can’t replace reading with other sources of information like videos, because you need to read in order to write well, and you need to write in order to think well.
Author: Paul Graham | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing, Thought | Inquiry
Our investment in reading changes the book because the book has changed us. … If books are merely a means of transferring information, then perhaps, yes, a book is a waste of time. If a summary of its thesis and key points could be presented in a brief article or Substack post, why not just save the hours and read the Substack post? All the … [ Read more ]
Author: Joel Miller | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing
While we naturally understand that writing is a good way to share ideas with others, we under-appreciate just how much good writing helps us think about an idea ourselves. Writing is not only a means of communication, it enables us to practice reasoning.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing, Thought | Inquiry
Writing is nature’s way of telling us how lousy our thinking is.
Author: Leslie Lamport | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing, Thought | Inquiry
Think of these levels as reading to entertain, reading to inform, reading to understand, and reading to master. When you learned to read in elementary school, you were taught to read for entertainment. If you made it to high school and college, you learned to read to inform. This is where most people stop. But most of the value comes at the last two levels. … [ Read more ]
Authors: Mortimer Adler, Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
Author: Francis Bacon | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing
Writing is like walking; you just put one word after another. And like walking, it helps immensely if you have a destination in mind.
Author: Jeff Blum | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing
Writing gives poor thinking nowhere to hide. When your invisible thoughts are made visible, you are forced to confront them as they are, not as you wish them to be. You can’t simply take a few minutes here and there, get the gist of the problem, and expect to have clear thinking and unique insights. Good thinking, like good writing, demands patience.
Author: Shane Parrish | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing, Thought | Inquiry
A good book gets better at the second reading. A great book at the third. Any book not worth rereading isn’t worth reading.
Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Reading | Writing
Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear. If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable.
Author: Pat Conroy | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Reading | Writing
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
Author: Sir Richard Steele | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing
The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency — the belief that the here and now is all there is.
Author: Allan Bloom | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Reading | Writing
Reading is an adventure. Adventures are about the unknown. When I started to read seriously I was excited and comforted all at the same time. Literature is a mix of unfamiliarity and recognition. The situation can take us anywhere — across time and space, the globe, through the lives of people who can never be like us — into the heart of anguish we have … [ Read more ]
Author: Jeanette Winterson | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Reading | Writing
Write what you know is reasonable advice. Read what you don’t know is better advice.
Author: Jeanette Winterson | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Reading | Writing
We read for countless reasons and books transform us in countless ways, reckoned and unreckoned. We read the way we love — with our whole selves, with the flickering constellation of values, longings, traumas, joys, hopes, despairs, formative experiences, and half-remembered impressions composing the self. We read with our whole being, but we also read ourselves into being as each book quietly reconfigures the constellation … [ Read more ]
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Reading | Writing
Any idea that is sufficiently different from your current worldview will feel threatening. And the best place to ponder a threatening idea is in a non-threatening environment. As a result, books are often a better vehicle for transforming beliefs than conversations or debates.
Author: James Clear | Subjects: Communication, Education | Scholarship, Psychology | Behavior, Reading | Writing
Books and stories are medicine, plaster casts for broken lives and hearts, slings for weakened spirits.
Author: Anne Lamott | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Reading | Writing
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
Author: Franz Kafka | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Reading | Writing
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.
Author: Oscar Wilde | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Personal Improvement, Reading | Writing
Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.
Author: David Quammen | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Reading | Writing