June 18, 2007

"Know What You Know..." (#14)

According to Archbishop Fulton Sheen, "some of the great geniuses of the past never read half as much as the mediocre geniuses today, but what they read they understood and incorporated into a deeper dimension of knowledge."

Cardinal Newman provides the antidote...

...know what you say you know: know what you know and what you do not know; get one thing well before you go on to a second; try to ascertain what your words mean; when you read a sentence, picture it before your mind as a whole, take in the truth or information contained in it, express it in your own words, and, if it be important, commit it to the faithful memory... This is the way to make progress; this is the way to arrive at results; not to swallow knowledge, but to masticate and digest it. (from The Idea of a University)

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