Just burning midnight oil

Elbert Green Hubbard once said that the recipe for perpetual ignorance is to be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge. Without any particular reason these words somehow sunk into my mind- it is simple and yet so right in so many ways.

We so many times fall into this trap, especially nowadays when everybody has an opinion about everything. We are bombed every day by the others' ideas, we in our turn voice our thoughts about things around, about the people we know, or not, about the universe, about that tone, or that look...And the trap is, while doing that we always forget to lend our ears to the others. We no longer read either, as that would definitely be just a waste of time. Why read? I know things... Well we definitely know more that before, but maybe we owe this to just having better antennae than people used to before. Why do I say that? well, simply because now we just pick things from around. We don't even realize they are not our own thoughts. We just find them there- in our heads- one day and of course in our pride we voice them loud. People have to hear them, after all they are genial ideas-they are ours, right?
You are going to say where is the problem? we still lend our ears and open our minds to the multitude of ideas out there, that must be a good thing, right? Not as long as we keep thinking those ideas were ours first. The trap is we just might end up being too content about "our knowledge" (which was never ours, in fact), or satisfied with our opinions (again not ours)...So the danger is we start living a lie, we are not only less smart and intelligent at the end of the day, but we are much prouder about ourselves, thus in fact diminishing our chances for true advancement and enlightment.
So my advise for you would be- go out there, take a book, dust it a bit and then plunge into its pages. You might be surprised. Then go hunting for ideas, but do it consciously and don't take credit for what's not yours. And you'll see how better man you will become by the end of that day!