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“ ”The constant steaming in of thoughts of others must suppress and confine our own and indeed in the long run paralyze the power of thought… The inclination of most scholars is a kind of fuga vacui ( latin for vacuum suction )from the poverty of their own mind , which forcibly draws in the thoughts of others… It is dangerous to read about a subject before we have thought about it ourselves… When we read, another person thinks for us; merely repeat his mental process. So it comes about that if anybody spends almost the whole day in reading, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking. Experience of the world may be looked upon as a kind of text, to which reflection and knowledge form the commentary. Where there is a great deal of reflection and intellectual knowledge and very little experience , the result is like those books which have on each page two lines of text to forty lines of commentary
William James Durant (5 November 1885 – 7 November 1981) was an American historian, philosopher and writer, best remembered for his works The Story of Philosophy, and The Story of Civilization.
Biography information from Wikiquote
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but now and then liberty, in the slogans of the strong, means freedom from restraint in the exploitation of the weak.
Men are not content with a simple life: they are acquisitive, ambitious, competitive, and jealous; they soon tire of what they have, and pine for what they have not; and they seldom desire anything unless it belongs to others.
This is the tragedy of almost every civilization — that its soul is in its faith, and seldom survives philosophy.