"The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries."
— René Descartes
The Reading Of All Good Books
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
About this quote
From Part I of the Discourse on the Method (1637), René Descartes's intellectual autobiography and manifesto. Descartes was a voracious reader who nevertheless concluded that too much book-learning, divorced from one's own reasoning, produces confusion rather than knowledge. He spent years travelling and observing the world directly before retreating to write the Discourse. The image of reading as conversation with great minds was later developed by Francis Bacon, Voltaire, and many Enlightenment thinkers who shared Descartes's faith that individual reason, guided by good method, could surpass inherited authority.
Source
Discourse on the Method, Part I (1637)
