you don't have to spend thousands of hours reading through their bad ideas to find the few good ones,

What are some of Hume's "bad" ideas?

I also think Hume was pretty amazing, which is why I picked him. Accusing him in particular of "bad" "ideas" is a bit harsh, since my issue is as much with non-ideas as with "bad" ones (so thanks for pointing this out). Let me say this better:

1) First, read the Wikipedia article on Hume and his many awesome ideas.

2) Next, start reading, say Part 1 of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (including Pamphilus to Hermippus).

They're about the same length, but the density of ideas in (2) that are interesting by modern standards is extremely low in comparison to (1). This is, of course, a credit to Hume: he was so right that his writing mostly looks like overly-verbose common sense these days, at least to regular readers of LessWrong.

I think I'll edit the OP to better reflect my view here. New sentence:

... But you don't have to spend thousands of hours reading through their flawed or now-uninteresting writings to find their few truly inspiring ideas, because their best ideas have become modern scientific knowledge.