“**The vice of “verbalism” can be defined as the bad habit of using words without regard for the thoughts they should convey and without awareness of the experiences to which they should refer**. It is playing with words. As the two tests we have suggested indicate, “verbalism” is the besetting sin of those who fail to read analytically. Such readers never get beyond the words. **They possess what they read as a verbal memory that they can recite emptily**. One of the charges made by certain modern educators against the liberal arts is that they tend to verbalism, but just the opposite seems to be the case. The failure in reading—the omnipresent verbalism—of those who have not been trained in the arts of grammar and logic shows how **lack of such discipline results in slavery to words rather than mastery of them**.” ([Location 1889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004PYDAPE&location=1889)) --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[reading-books]], [[analytical-reading]], [[semantic-creep]], [[verbalism]], [[Richard Feynman]] **Source** -- [[20250103084100 - B - How to Read a Book]]