Shahriyor Amirov

"Any friendship that can be fully explained by a reason, Montaigne suggests, is fragile."

In Montaigne's essay On Friendship (De l'amitié), there is a chapter about the Rarity of True Friendship. Montaigne says that genuine friendship is extraordinarily rare, perhaps a lifetime. He distinguishes it from ordinary relationships, acquaintances, and even family bonds, which cannot match true friendship.

Most relationships are conditional while true friendship is not. If you are friends with someone because they are useful to you, it most likely ends when the usefulness ends. If you are friends with someone because they are pleasant, it ends when the pleasure fades. If you are friends with someone out of obligation, it is not freedom, so it is not true friendship. And he points that friendship is backed by something which is beyond language and reason.

Montaigne dedicated this chapter to La Boétie, a brilliant French magistrate and writer who became Montaigne's closest friend around 1558. Their bond was immediate, deep, and total. La Boétie died just a few years later at the age of 32, likely from plague, with Montaigne at his bedside. The essay on friendship is essentially Montaigne's grief made into philosophy.

"—All things are foreign to us. Time alone is ours."

One of his essays is about Time. It is without doubt the oldest problem that never got solved. Two thousand years have passed since Seneca wrote these letters. In 2026, we have smartphones, calendars, productivity apps, and self-help industries worth billions — all of them only to make our lives more convenient. And yet we still feel like time is slipping through our fingers.

The problem is not a lack of tools. The problem is that we became terribly ignorant to ourselves. Definitely worth reading as a short essay when you're on the subway without internet.

You can't really get good at anything if you're not fully focused — your mind just "bounces off" what you're trying to learn instead of taking it in. Even if you try to hammer information into someone's head, it won't stick if they aren't locked in.

"All values and beliefs are relative — we should strive to create our own rather than following those of others."

Beyond Good and Evil challenges traditional morality and philosophy. Nietzsche’s main focus is to move beyond the limitations of traditional morality to create a new way of thinking about life and the world.

Nietzsche argues that good and evil are not fixed concepts, but are relative to the culture and society in which they exist. He suggests that we should embrace this relativity and create our own values and beliefs.

"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there’s so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share."

Harry Frankfurt distinguishes bullshit from lies: a liar knows the truth and is trying to convince us of something different, while a bullshitter either doesn’t know the truth, or doesn’t care — and is just trying to be persuasive, impressive and manipulative.

A society mired in bullshit can’t recognise the difference between truth and lie at all. We give opinions on things we haven’t read. We always pretend to be doing something — endlessly busy, endlessly productive, endlessly active. The real answer isn’t “to be noticed” but that it is more appealing to live inside our illusions.

"One morning, Gregor Samsa woke up and found himself transformed into a monstrous insect. His family’s first concern? He’ll be late for work."

Kafka wrote The Metamorphosis in 1915. Yet it has never felt more relevant for the worker to exist, the family suffocating under debt, the individual slowly erased when he can no longer perform his function.

Is Gregor the one who changed? Or did the transformation simply make visible what was always there?

"Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same colour as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated."

The Old Man and the Sea possesses a timeless, universal quality — which is probably why people are still devouring it. The plot is simple: an old man goes fishing. He is considered salao — the worst form of unlucky — and hasn’t caught a fish in eighty-four days.

A story about the test of endurance, pride, and the human spirit. Maybe I’m the TikTok generation who is insanely impatient. If I were that old man, I would just throw that fish.

"All his life he had not planted one tree in his own garden, nor grown one blade of grass; and living among the living, he had not saved one fly."

As the moment of the duel approaches, Laevsky begins to think about death and life constantly. The closer it gets, the more he panics — not because of being killed, but he realises how empty and wasted his life is. Chekhov wants the reader to see that Laevsky’s fear isn’t death but facing the truth of what he had done with his life.

In our lives we also hide from responsibilities, repeat the same excuses, and convince ourselves that “later” we will become better. As Dostoyevsky says, “Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”

Chekhov and Dostoyevsky tell us that the tragedy is not failure or hardship, but living without ever asking what our life is.

"Bad writing makes it easier to defend the indefensible because it lets you avoid confronting what you’re actually saying."

Orwell argued that the lack of clarity in political writing was not just linguistic incompetence, but intellectually and morally corrosive. Politicians, trying to defend the indefensible, will not write “defenseless villagers are bombarded from the air” but “pacification.”

And then there is the shrinking of language — the most chilling idea. Why would a totalitarian regime want to get rid of words? Because if you remove the word for a concept, you remove the ability to think it. “In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

Orwell wants us to bear in mind that the decay of any language is never accidental. If we lose control of our words, it is inevitable that we lose control of our thoughts.

"Schools banned this book. What an irony. A book which warns about the danger of banning books, was removed from American libraries for decades."

In this universe, firemen don’t extinguish fire. They ignite it. And it’s always ignited on books.

But Bradbury wasn’t writing about a distant future. Decades later, it feels more like a prophecy.

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

In a ravaged post-apocalyptic future, the world has divided itself into three totalitarian superpowers. Winston works in the Ministry of Truth every day revising, rewriting, and burning history records to match the ever-changing version dictated by Big Brother.

The totalitarian regime not only wanted obedience — they wanted to take control of thoughts. The idea of shrinking the dictionary was to prevent potential threats by minimising the spread of radical ideas. Orwell wants us to bear in mind that the decay of any language is never accidental. If we lose control of our words, it is inevitable that we lose control of our thoughts.

"The animals overthrow their human master. Freedom at last. Equality for all. A perfect society… for about five minutes."

In 20th-century England, George Orwell wrote about a farm and turned it into a political theme. Then the pigs take charge. Rules change. Truth disappears. History gets rewritten while everyone is looking the other way.

Most people pick up Animal Farm thinking it’s just a book about the Soviet Union. But Orwell isn’t just talking about 1917. He’s talking about us. How quickly we believe slogans. How easily we trade freedom for comfort. By the time you notice what happened… it’s already too late.

"The world where children do not go to school. Instead, knowledge is uploaded directly to the brain."

A young man George Platen fails the test. The machine rejects him, but his dream doesn’t die. Because George is different, not defective. While everyone else is programmed with knowledge about everything from tiny cells to the structure of big stars, George picks up a real book and opens it.

And at that moment George understands something the machine can never understand. It wasn’t just about storing information. It was about discovery, struggle, and imagination.

Anyone who has finished a standardised education should read this. Most people ignore or forget that economics, money, law, and even culture are completely made up by other people.

"You will read the same story seven times. Each time, billions of years pass. Each time, humanity will ask the same question."

Each time the answer is the same: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER. Until it isn’t.

The question will be asked by two drunk men. And it will be answered by god.

One of the best books I have ever read.