With a keen interest in study we will be enthusiastic volunteers rather than reluctant conscripts, and study will be a lifelong habit instead of a temporary pastime. Study and deliberation complement each other, as do study and practice As a Chinese saying goes: "Learning without thought is pointless. Thought without learning is dangerous." If you have problems in mind and want to find good solutions to them, you should start studying and study conscientiously
--Speech given by Xi Jinping at the celebration assembly of the 80th anniversary of the Central Party School and the opening ceremony of its 2013 spring semester, March 1, 2013
Learning Without Thought Is Pointless.
Thought Without Learning Is Dangerous
-- Study and contemplation complement each other
The phrase, "Learning without thought is pointless; thought without learning is dangerous" originates from Book 2 of The Analects by Confucius. Xi Jinping quoted this line during his speech at the opening ceremony for the Central Party School to explain the broad and important relationship among learning, thought, and practice.
Confucius was a philosopher and educator during the late Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC), and the founder of Confucianism. He dedicated his life to teaching others and answering life's most difficult questions, and he was known as "the first sage and teacher, and a model for the ages." After Confucius died, his disciples and their disciples passed on the records of his conversations with his students, which were compiled into the Confucian classic The Analects we all are familiar with today. The Analects is composed of twenty books in total with content ranging from politics and education to literature, philosophy, and general life principles. Along with The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, and Mencius, it constitutes The Four Books of Confucianism.
"Learning without thought is pointless; thought without learning is dangerous" means that studying without thinking about it will result in being in the dark and not learning anything at all, and empty thought without a basis in learning leads to confusion and a lack of insight. We can regard this line as a method of studying that Confucius advocated. Blind study without contemplation is like having books lead you along by the nose without forming your own opinion. Another saying, "trusting everything you read in books is worse than not reading at all," gets at the same point. Similarly, simply thinking on your own without studying and researching your subject is like building a tower on a base of sand - you will gain nothing in the end. The only way to gain true knowledge is by combining study with contemplation.
Leading officials need to study hard in order to gain from their studies. Chinese history is flail of moving tales of hardworking students, like the student who tied his hair up to the ceiling to keep studying, the one who jabbed himself in the leg to stay awake, the one who knocked a hole in his wall to "steal" light from his neighbor, and the ones who studied by the light of fireflies and moonlight reflected off the snow. These stories have inspired generations of students, and the spirit of such hard work is worth recording for posterity. Xi Jinping quoted the line "learning without thought is pointless; thought without learning is dangerous" to explain the complementary and inseparable nature of hard study and serious contemplation.
Leading officials must not be dogmatic in their studies, and must truly combine study and contemplation. Some people take a dogmatic attitude toward Marxism, seeing it as a panacea for every problem and applying it to everything, without considering how it relates to actual problems and how to resolve them. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels sternly criticized this tendency. Marx said, "If this is Marxism, I am certain that I myself am not a Marxist." Engels also sarcastically said, "Marx probably told these people what Heine told his imitators: 'I have sown dragon's teeth and harvested fleas."
In their course of study, leading officials must consider their actual work, with several questions in mind at any given time. They must focus on theories that can apply to these questions. In the words of Mao Zedong, this is called "shooting the arrow at the target," and is the opposite of formalism, putting on a show, repeating empty words, writing pointless articles, and engaging in empty talk. Some people engage in "book worship," take everything they read at face value, and do not use theory to "dispel doubts" about actual problems. They only repeat the words from books to judge the practice of reform and opening up, or they use a utilitarian approach in taking only what they want from their studies and use it for their own purposes.
Leading officials must focus on thinking about theories that can resolve real problems. They must stand at the forefront of reform and opening up and the developing international situation, in order to learn what is going on, discover new problems, find new ways of thinking, and explore new courses of action. They should not rigidly stick to the old ways, maintain the status quo, and never move forward. So long as we always have questions on our minds, we will be self-propelled to study conscientiously and actively throughout our entire lives.
(An excerpt from XI JINPING: WIT AND VISION -- SELECTED QUOTATIONS AND COMMENTARY, published by FOREIGN LANGUAGES PRESS in 2015)
