"reading unimportant books about the important books that I haven't had time to read"

roger-scruton.com

"academic knowledge is as much a distraction from the life of the mind as an application of it."

     "In twenty years of university teaching, poring over footnotes in journals devoted to the study of footnotes, attending conferences in which small increments of knowledge are swamped by large swathes of ignorance, and reading unimportant books about the important books that I haven't had time to read, I retained a longing for the ideal of the collegiate life.  I envisaged a society of friends for whom ideas are captured from the world of real experience, and brought to the place of dialogue, there to be the source and object of our shared interest.  But I came to see that it is far easier to create this society for yourself than to find it in institutions of higher learning."

     Roger Scruton, "Living with a mind," First things no. 258 (December 2015):  45 (43-48).