the Greater Nomadic Council

Squashed Philosophers

Read summaries of some of the most important philosophers' ideas in around 30 minutes per philosopher. There's Plato, Socrates, Boethius, Locke, Kant, Nietzsche, and many others. Some very well chosen quotes, too. If you're in a real hurry, they even have a "Very Squashed Version." For example, from one of my favorite books:

When I wrote the following pages I lived alone in the woods, a mile from my neighbours, in a house I had built for myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labour of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again. Men labour under a mistake. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed laying up treasure which moth and rust will corrupt.Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply, nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles. The exact cost of my house, was just over twenty-eight dollars. I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. I found myself suddenly neighbour to the birds and animals. Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? As for work, we haven't any of any consequence. Time is but the stream I go fishing in. Sometimes in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon. I realise what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. I found, by measurement, that Walden Pond was not bottomless. I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. It seemed to me that I had several more lives to live. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I learned this, at least, by my experiment, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. In proportion as he simplifies his life the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor will poverty be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

It seems to lose a little bit of the leisurely feel of Walden in the compression.