Top 87 Mortimer J. Adler Quotes
#2. If your friend wishes to read your 'Plutarch's Lives,' 'Shakespeare,' or 'The Federalist Papers,' tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat - but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.
Mortimer J. Adler
#3. Remember Bacon's recommendation to the reader: Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
Mortimer J. Adler
#4. Scientific objectivity is not the absence of initial bias. It is attained by frank confession of it.
Mortimer J. Adler
#5. The human mind is as naturally sensitive to arguments as the eye is to colors. (There may be some people who are argument-blind!) But the eye will not see if it is not kept open, and the mind will not follow an argument if it is not awake.
Mortimer J. Adler
#6. From your point of view as a reader, therefore, the most important words are those that give you trouble.
Mortimer J. Adler
#7. If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you don't already possess
Mortimer J. Adler
#9. Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts.
Mortimer J. Adler
#10. There is no inactive learning, just as there is no inactive reading.
Mortimer J. Adler
#11. One of the most familiar tricks of the orator or propagandist is to leave certain things unsaid, things that are highly relevant to the argument, but that might be challenged if they were made explicit. While
Mortimer J. Adler
#12. There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well. The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all sophomores.
Mortimer J. Adler
#13. Now there is no other way of forming a habit of operation than by operating.
Mortimer J. Adler
#14. You must be able to say "I understand," before you can say "I agree," or "I disagree," or "I suspend judgment.
Mortimer J. Adler
#16. TURN THE PAGES, DIPPING IN HERE AND THERE, READING A PARAGRAPH OR TWO, SOMETIMES SEVERAL PAGES IN SEQUENCE, NEVER MORE THAN THAT.
Mortimer J. Adler
#20. As arts, grammar and logic are concerned with language in relation to thought and thought in relation to language. That is why skill in both reading and writing is gained through these arts.
Mortimer J. Adler
#21. Even when you have been somewhat enlightened by what you have read, you are called upon to continue the serach for significance.
Mortimer J. Adler
#22. Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business.
Mortimer J. Adler
#24. True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.
Mortimer J. Adler
#25. There is no more irritating fellow than the one who tries to settle an argument about communism, or justice, or freedom, by quoting from the dictionary. Lexicographers may be respected as authorities on word usage, but they are not the ultimate founts of wisdom.
Mortimer J. Adler
#26. Read the book through, undeterred and undismayed by the paragraphs, footnotes, comments, and references that escape you. If you let yourself get stalled, if you allow yourself to be tripped up by any one of these stumbling blocks, you are lost.
Mortimer J. Adler
#27. Think of yourself as a detective looking for clues to a book's general theme or idea, alert for anything that will make it clearer.
Mortimer J. Adler
#28. Understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher.
Mortimer J. Adler
#29. The beauty of any work of art is related to the pleasure it gives us when we know it well.
Mortimer J. Adler
#30. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.
Mortimer J. Adler
#31. Men are creatures of passion and prejudice. The language they must use to communicate is an imperfect medium, clouded by emotion and colored by interest, as well as inadequately transparent for thought.
Mortimer J. Adler
#32. As Thomas Hobbes said, If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are.
Mortimer J. Adler
#33. A practical problem can only be solved by action itself. When your practical problem is how to earn a living, a book on how to make friends and influence people cannot solve it, though it may suggest things to do. Nothing short of the doing solves the problem. It is solved only by earning a living.
Mortimer J. Adler
#35. But it may be seriously questioned whether the advent of modern communications media has much enhanced our understanding of the world
Mortimer J. Adler
#36. The first dictionaries were glossaries of Homeric words, intended to help Romans read the Iliad and Odyssey as well as other Greek literature employing the 'archaic' Homeric vocabulary.
Mortimer J. Adler
#37. Great speed in reading is a dubious achievement; it is of value only if what you have to read is not worth reading.
Mortimer J. Adler
#38. Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.
Mortimer J. Adler
#39. It is traditional in America to criticize the schools; for more than a century, parents, self-styled experts, and educators themselves have attacked and indicted the educational system.
Mortimer J. Adler
#40. Reading a book is a kind of conversation. You may think it is not conversation at all, because the author does all the talking and you have nothing to say. If you think that, you do not realize your full obligation as a reader - and you are not grasping your opportunities.
Mortimer J. Adler
#41. To this day, most institutions of higher learning either do not know how to instruct students in reading beyond the elementary level, or lack the facilities and personnel to do so.
Mortimer J. Adler
#42. You cannot begin to deal with terms, propositions, and arguments - the elements of thought - until you can penetrate beneath the surface of language.
Mortimer J. Adler
#43. 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.
Mortimer J. Adler
#44. Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author.
Mortimer J. Adler
#45. Good books are over your head; they would not be good for you if they were not.
Mortimer J. Adler
#46. Finally, do not try to understand every word or page of a difficult book the first time through. This is the most important rule of all; it is the essence of inspectional reading.
Mortimer J. Adler
#47. The art of reading, in short, includes all of the same skills that are involved in the art of unaided discovery: keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and, of course, an intellect trained in analysis and reflection.
Mortimer J. Adler
#48. The ability to retain a child's view of the world with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare - and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking.
Mortimer J. Adler
#49. In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
Mortimer J. Adler
#50. To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.
Mortimer J. Adler
#51. Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree?
Mortimer J. Adler
#52. Many readers fear that it would be disloyal to their commitment to stand apart and impersonally question what they are reading. Yet this is necessary whenever you read analytically.
Mortimer J. Adler
#53. Most of us are addicted to non-active reading. The outstanding fault of the non-active or undemanding reader is his inattention to words, and his consequent failure to come to terms with the author.
Mortimer J. Adler
#54. In judging a practical book, everything turns on the ends or goals.
Mortimer J. Adler
#55. The student can read as fast as his mind will let him, not as slow as his eyes make him.
Mortimer J. Adler
#56. The possession of the truth is the highest goal of the human mind.
Mortimer J. Adler
#57. All books will become light in proportion as you find light in them.
Mortimer J. Adler
#58. Being relevant simply consists in paying close attention to the point that is being talked about and saying nothing that is not significantly related to it.
Mortimer J. Adler
#59. Getting more information is learning, and so is coming to understand what you did not understand before. But there is an important difference between these two kinds of learning.
Mortimer J. Adler
#60. The first stage of elementary reading - reading readiness - corresponds to pre-school and kindergarten experiences.
Mortimer J. Adler
#63. The reader who fails to ponder, or at least mark, the words he does not understand is headed for disaster.
Mortimer J. Adler
#64. The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.
Mortimer J. Adler
#65. You will find that your comprehension of any book will be enormously increased if you only go to the trouble of finding its important words, identifying their shifting meanings, and coming to terms. Seldom does such a small change in habit have such a large effect.
Mortimer J. Adler
#66. The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.
Mortimer J. Adler
#67. A lecture has been well described as the process whereby the notes of the teacher become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either.
Mortimer J. Adler
#68. Don't try to resist the effect that a work of imaginative literature has on you.
Mortimer J. Adler
#69. It is only obvious that teaching is a very special art, sharing withonly two other arts-argriculture and medicin-an exceptionally important characteristic.
Mortimer J. Adler
#70. The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.
Mortimer J. Adler
#71. If an author does not give reasons for his propositions, they can only be treated as expressions of personal opinion on his part.
Mortimer J. Adler
#72. Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.
Mortimer J. Adler
#73. Reading well, which means reading actively, is thus not only a good in itself, nor is it merely a means to advancement in our work or career. It also serves to keep our minds alive and growing.
Mortimer J. Adler
#74. It is only when you try to refine the obvious, and give the distinctions greater precision, that you get into difficulties. For
Mortimer J. Adler
#76. Always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.
Mortimer J. Adler
#77. The truly great books are the few books that are over everybody's head all of the time.
Mortimer J. Adler
#79. We hope you have not made the error of supposing that to criticize is always to disagree. (...) To agree is just as much of an exercise of critical judgment on your part as to disagree.
Mortimer J. Adler
#80. A person who has read widely but not well deserves to be pitied rather than praised. As
Mortimer J. Adler
#81. We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few.
Mortimer J. Adler
#82. There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception.
Mortimer J. Adler
#84. Philosophy is like science and unlike history in that it seeks general truths rather than an account of particular events, either in the near or distant past.
Mortimer J. Adler
#85. For those of us who are no longer in school, we observed, it is necessary, if we want to go on learning and discovering, to know how to make books teach us well. In that situation, if we want to go on learning, then we must know how to learn from books, which are absent teachers.
Mortimer J. Adler
#86. The dictionary also invites a playful reading. It challenges anyone to sit down with it in an idle moment. There are worse ways to kill time.
Mortimer J. Adler
#87. The tragedy of being both rational and animal seems to consist in having to choose between duty and desire rather than in making any particular choice
Mortimer J. Adler
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