Does anyone else, when reading a book by a famous author (or any text for which the author could clearly expect that it would be read by a lot of people), think something along the lines of:

That was it, a chance to be read or heard by many people, to tell them something that matters and get your point across. This was a chance to pick important ideas and start spreading them. This was a chance to convince, a chance to change the way we think, a chance to change the world.

And, yes, what you said was probably important, and you said it well. But was that really the most important thing you could come up with?