To me, the most astounding thing about the greatest teachers of humankind is how little they read. Everything Aristotle ever read in his lifetime fills a couple of volumes on my shelf. Jesus read the scrolls of the Hebrew bible. The Buddha is said to have been unable to read.

Even modern examples are still sobering. The protestant reformers knew the church fathers mostly from anthologies of quotations. Even Milton’s vast learning was deep rather than wide; it would not take too long to read all the books that Milton ever read

As scholars, we reconstruct what earlier thinkers had read as a context for interpreting their ideas. But the limitation of this method appears as soon as you remember how many people (oneself included) have read all the same stuff without becoming Jesus or Milton or Aristotle

I get quite provoked when I hear of older scholars fatalistically advising eager young minds that they could never really read Kant or Aquinas (or whoever) until they’ve first read a gazillion other books. Wittgenstein never got around to reading Aristotle: just think of that

I read a lot myself and am always an advocate of primary sources! I just don’t like it when the vague huge mass of Everything Ever Written is invoked to discourage anyone from being deliberately selective, or from reading one thing well in a spirit of gratitude and contentment