ZJ

“To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.”
― Lao Tse

“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain you.”
― Jim Mattis, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead

“Many of those skilled in technological warfare believe that physical training and discipline are unnecessary. With turbolasers, hyperdrives, armor plating and the mental resources to direct them, muscular strength and agility are thought to be merely conceits. They are wrong. The mind and body are linked together in a meshwork of oxygen, nutrients, hormones and neuron health. Physical exercise drives that meshwork, stimulating the brain and freeing one's intellect.”
― Timothy Zahn, Thrawn