14 WAYS TO ACQUIRE KNOWLEDGE

1. PRACTICE
Consider the knowledge you already have the things you really know you can do. They are the things you
have done over and over; practiced them so often that they became second nature. Every normal person
knows how to walk and talk. But he could never have acquired this knowledge without practice. For the young
child cant do the things that are easy to older people without first doing them over and over and over.
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Most of us quit on the first or second attempt. But the man who is really going to be educated, who intends
toknow, is going to stay with it until it is done. Practice!
2. ASK
Any normal child, at about the age of three or four, reaches the asking period, the time when that quickly
developing brain is most eager for knowledge. When? Where? How? What? and Why? begs the child
but all too often the reply is Keep still! Leave me alone! Dont be a pest!
Those first bitter refusals to our honest questions of childhood all too often squelch our Asking faculty. We
grow up to be men and women, still eager for knowledge, but afraid and ashamed to ask in order to get it.
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Every person possessing knowledge is more than willing to communicate what he knows to any serious,
sincere person who asks. The question never makes the asker seem foolish or childish rather, to ask is to
command the respect of the other person who in the act of helping you is drawn closer to you, likes you
better and will go out of his way on any future occasion to share his knowledge with you.
Ask! When you ask, you have to be humble. You have to admit you dont know! But whats so terrible about
that? Everybody knows that no man knows everything, and to ask is merely to let the other know that you are
honest about things pertaining to knowledge.
3. DESIRE
You never learn much until you really want to learn. A million people have said: Gee, I wish I were musical! If
I only could do that! or How I wish I had a good education! But they were only talking words they
didnt mean it.
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Desire is the foundation of all learning and you can only climb up the ladder of knowledge by desiring to learn.
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If you dont desire to learn youre either a num-skull [sic] or a know-it-all. And the world wants nothing to do
with either type of individual.
4. GET IT FROM YOURSELF
You may be surprised to hear that you already know a great deal! Its all inside you its all there you
couldnt live as long as you have and not be full of knowledge.
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Most of your knowledge, however and this is the great difference between non-education and education
is not in shape to be used, you havent it on the tip of your tongue. Its hidden, buried away down inside of you
and because you cant see it, you think it isnt there.
Knowledge is knowledge only when it takes a shape, when it can be put into words, or reduced to a principle
and its now up to you to go to work on your own gold mine, to refine the crude ore.
5. WALK AROUND IT
Any time you see something new or very special, if the thing is resting on the ground, as your examination and
inspection proceeds, you find that you eventuallywalk around it. You desire to know the thing better by looking
at it from all angles.
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To acquire knowledge walk around the thing studied. The thing is not only what you touch, what you see; it has
many other sides, many other conditions, many other relations which you cannot know until you study it from
all angles.
The narrow mind stays rooted in one spot; the broad mind is free, inquiring, unprejudiced; it seeks to learn
both sides of the story.
Dont screen off from your own consciousness the bigger side of your work. Dont be afraid youll harm yourself
if you have to change a preconceived opinion. Have a free, broad, open mind! Be fair to the thing studied as
well as to yourself. When it comes up for your examination, walk around it! The short trip will bring long
knowledge.
6. EXPERIMENT
The world honors the man who is eager to plant new seeds of study today so he may harvest a fresh crop of
knowledge tomorrow. The world is sick of the man who is always harking back to the past and thinks
everything wroth knowing has already been learned. Respect the past, take what it offers, but dont live in it.
To learn, experiment! Try something new. See what happens. Lindbergh experimented when he flew the
Atlantic. Pasteur experimented with bacteria and made cows milk safe for the human race. Franklin
experimented with a kite and introduced electricity.
The greatest experiment is nearly always a solo. The individual, seeking to learn, tries something new but only
tries it on himself. If he fails, he has hurt only himself. If he succeeds he has made a discovery many people
can use. Experiment only with your own time, your own money, your own labor. Thats the honest, sincere
type of experiment. Its rich. The cheap experiment is to use other peoples money, other peoples destinies,
other peoples bodies as if they were guinea pigs.
7. TEACH
If you would have knowledge, knowledge sure and sound, teach. Teach your children, teach your associates,
teach your friends. In the very act of teaching, you will learn far more than your best pupil.
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Knowledge is relative; you possess it in degrees. You know more about reading, writing, and arithmetic than
your young child. But teach that child at every opportunity; try to pass on to him all you know, and the very
attempt will produce a great deal more knowledge inside your own brain.
8. READ
From time immemorial it has been commonly understood that the best way to acquire knowledge was to read.
That is not true. Reading is only one way to knowledge, and in the writers opinion, not the best way. But you
can surely learn from reading if you read in the proper manner.
What you read is important, but not all important. How you read is the main consideration. For if you knowhow
to read, theres a world of education even in the newspapers, the magazines, on a single billboard or a stray
advertising dodger.
The secret of good reading is this: read critically!
Somebody wrote that stuff youre reading. It was a definite individual, working with a pen, pencil or typewriter
the writing came from his mind and hisonly. If you were face to face with him and listening instead of reading,
you would be a great deal more critical than the average reader is. Listening, you would weigh his personality,
you would form some judgment about his truthfulness, his ability. But reading, you drop all judgment, and
swallow his words whole just as if the act of printing the thing made it true!
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If you must read in order to acquire knowledge, read critically. Believe nothing till its understood, till its clearly
proven.
9. WRITE
To know it write it! If youre writing to explain, youre explaining it to yourself! If youre writing to inspire,youre
inspiring yourself! If youre writing to record, youre recording it on your own memory. How often you have
written something down in order to be sure you would have a record of it, only to find that you never needed
the written record because you had learned it by heart!
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The men of the best memories are those who make notes, who write things down. They just dont write to
remember, they write to learn. And because they DO learn by writing, they seldom need to consult their notes,
they have brilliant, amazing memories. How different from the glib, slipshod individual who is too proud or too
lazy to write, who trusts everything to memory, forgets so easily, and possesses so little real knowledge.
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Write! Writing, to knowledge, is a certified check. Youknow what you know once you have written it down!
10. LISTEN
You have a pair of ears use them! When the other man talks, give him a chance. Pay attention. If you listen
you may hear something useful to you. If you listen you may receive a warning that is worth following. If you
listen, you may earn the respect of those whose respect you prize.
Pay attention to the person speaking. Contemplate the meaning of his words, the nature of his thoughts.
Grasp and retain the truth.
Of all the ways to acquire knowledge, this way requires least effort on your part. You hardly have to do any
work. You are bound to pick up information. Its easy, its surefire.
11. OBSERVE
Keep your eyes open. There are things happening, all around you, all the time. The scene of events is
interesting, illuminating, full of news and meaning. Its a great show an impressive parade of things worth
knowing. Admission is free keep your eyes open.
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There are only two kinds of experience: the experience of ourselves and the experience of others. Our own
experience is slow, labored, costly, and often hard to bear. The experience of others is a ready-made set of
directions on knowledge and life. Their experience is free; we need suffer none of their hardships; we may
collect on all their good deeds. All we have to do isobserve!
Observe! Especially the good man, the valorous deed. Observe the winner that you yourself may strive to
follow that winning example and learn the scores of different means and devices that make success possible.
Observe! Observe the loser that you may escape his mistakes, avoid the pitfalls that dragged him down.
Observe the listless, indifferent, neutral people who do nothing, know nothing, are nothing. Observe them and
then differ from them.
12. PUT IN ORDER
Order is Heavens first law. And the only good knowledge is orderly knowledge! You must put your information
and your thoughts in order before you can effectively handle your own knowledge. Otherwise you will jump
around in conversation like a grasshopper, your arguments will be confused and distributed, your brain will be
in a dizzy whirl all the time.
13. DEFINE
A definition is a statement about a thing which includes everything the thing is and excludes everything it is not.
A definition of a chair must include every chair, whether it be kitchen chair, a high chair, a dentists chair, or the
electric chair, It must exclude everything which isnt a chair, even those things which come close, such as a
stool, a bench, a sofa.
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I am sorry to state that until you can so define chair or door (or a thousand other everyday familiar objects)you
dont really know what these things are. You have the ability to recognize them and describe them but you
cant tell what their nature is. Your knowledge is notexact.
14. REASON
Animals have knowledge. But only men can reason.The better you can reason the farther you separate
yourself from animals.
The process by which you reason is known as logic. Logic teaches you how to derive a previously unknown
truth from the facts already at hand. Logic teaches you how to be sure whether what you think is true is really
true.
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Logic is the supreme avenue to intellectual truth. Dont ever despair of possessing a logical mind. You dont
have to study it for years, read books and digest a mountain of data. All you have to remember is one word
compare.
Compare all points in a proposition. Note the similarity that tells you something new. Note the difference
that tells you something new. Then take the new things youve found and check them against established laws
or principles.
This is logic. This is reason. This is knowledge in its highest form.