This is a point i have been trying to make

"It is costly wisdom that is bought by experience.... Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty"
Roger Ascham(takenfrom the Theophysical Digest,1st quarter 2005)

this(plus the latest qoutes i posted) is specially dedicated to those who hate reading or who don't read or who dismiss history as a primary/valuable learning tool, and to those who don't understand my frustration when i do meet such people.... i used to quote Goethe to them(from the book Sophie's World's intro"Those who cannot draw upon 3000 years of human existence are living from hand to mouth" or words to that effect, can't quite remember verbatim now -- but i couldn't quite get my point across and i believe the Roger Ascham's quote would be better at it^_^. i just used to call them "arrogant bastards" when i get frustrated, but i know that never accomplished anything constructive)

Why arrogant?because i have met lots of people, decent very intelligent persons, who regard their experience and reasonings as the end when it comes to the validity of lessons to be learned some even think that their epiphanies are "it"(congratulating themselves on their brilliance) failing to consider that their experience/s,thought/s may not be unique and that it may have been experienced/thought by other persons before in the long course of human existence in this planet and that that experience/thought has been reflected upon and the lessons extracted,learned/rejected in the test of millenia. and here you are convinced that your conclusions, from your life experience, are IT!! slow down. read, read with the spirit of learning, you may find more valuable gems in your life experiences that you uncover from taking part in the author's story. though these lessons are distilled from the author's own life experiences, you can partake of the lifetime it took to gather these lessons i njust a day or two of reading(or an hour or four)enriching your own immensely for a fraction of the time and cost to gather the same lessons where you to experience the same exact experiences that has enabled the author to learn those hard bought lessons. Only if you have partaken a lot can you even safely argue that your epiphanies are IT!!in short, do your research first ^_^ and let your reason//assent//doubt have free reign so that you can really suck out all the marrow you can get from you life experiences, as well as the collective human experience and hopefully the lessons that need to be learned will BE learnt by you and can be contributed to the collective human experience.pushing us one step closer to realizing our potential, one step closer to be truly human.