Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:
Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.
Reread the quote. Erasmus isn't just talking about reading. There are multiple relations:
Knowledge is useless sitting there untouched you have to actively make use of it.
to truly understand something you have to make that knowledge your own, write down things, make annotations, work through examples, read and reread the book. You can't just absorb the knowledge by skimming through.
There are lost purposes here. How many people have books just to look cultured, or read books just to say they have read them. Think of all the famous unread books or Gatsby's famous library.
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: