If you were a medieval scholar reading a book, you knew that there was a reasonable likelihood you'd never see that particular text again, and so a high premium was placed on remembering what you read. You couldn't just pull a book off the shelf to consult it for a quote or an idea.
Interpretation
In the past, knowledge was treasured and memorization was crucial due to limited access to books.
This quote highlights the importance of memory and the value placed on knowledge in a time when access to written texts was not as easy as it is today. When scholars could not revisit books at will, they dedicated themselves to remembering the information contained within them, acknowledging that the act of reading was not merely a passive exercise but an essential part of their intellectual survival and growth.
In practice
In a seminar about the importance of literacy, you might quote this to emphasize the value of retaining knowledge.
We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, or invention, or insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least.
Sequencing - the careful striptease by which you reveal information to the reader - matters in an article, but it is absolutely essential to a book.
Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next - and disappear.
I met with amnesiacs and savants, educators and scientists, to try to understand what memory is, why it works, why it sometimes doesn't, and what its potential might be.
There are two possibilities: Either the kiss is a human universal, one of the constellation of innate traits, including language and laughter, that unites us as a species, or it is an invention, like fire or wearing clothes, an idea so good that it was bound to metastasize across the globe.
To the extent that experience is the sum of our memories and wisdom the sum of experience, having a better memory would mean knowing not only more about the world, but also more about myself.
In the ideal college, intrinsic education would be available to anyone who wanted it...The college would be life-long, for learning can take place all through life.
I think we should bring up our children with much less pressure to compete and get ahead: no comparing one child with another, at home or in school; no grades. Let athletics be primarily for fun, and let them be organized by children and youths themselves.
It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren.
If your words aren't truthful, the finest optically letter-spaced typography won't help.
Public education is the key civil rights issue of the 21st century. Our nation's knowledge-based economy demands that we provide young people from all backgrounds and circumstances with the education and skills necessary to become knowledge workers. If we don't, we run the risk of creating an even larger gap between the middle class and the poor. This gap threatens our democracy, our society and the economic future of America.
Middle-income countries need to attend to the education of their poorest people to build their economies and ensure long-term stability.
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