Georg Christoph Lichtenberg on Superficiality

“It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial.”

“It is certainly better not to have studied a subject at all than to have studied it superficially. For when the unaided healthy common sense seeks to form an opinion of something it does not go so far wrong as semi-erudition does.”