Learning without thinking is a waste, thinking without learning is peril.

Excerpted from "The Analects of Confucius: Weizheng Chapter"

Explanation: Just studying without thinking will lead to confusion and gaining nothing; just thinking without learning will lead to mental fatigue and gaining nothing.

This sentence is a reading and learning method advocated by Confucius. It means that if you just read without thinking, you will not be able to use the knowledge in the book reasonably and effectively because you cannot deeply understand the meaning of the book, and you will even get confused.

If you just dream without actually studying and studying, you will end up building a tower on sand and gain nothing. It warns us that only by combining learning and thinking can we learn practical and useful knowledge, otherwise we will have little effect.

Extended information

Different explanations:

"Learning without thinking means losing sight": If you memorize without thinking or understanding, you will not be able to live. If you learn to apply it flexibly and integrate it, no matter how good your memory is, your grades will not be very good.

"Thinking without learning is dangerous": If you are good at thinking without learning, no matter how strong your logical thinking ability is, you will be limited to fantasy failure due to lack of knowledge accumulation.

New explanation: If you don’t understand knowledge when you learn it, and if you don’t face real problems, the knowledge will be useless. If you don’t summarize the real problems when you face them, if you don’t learn knowledge, the problem won’t be solved.