Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
17 quotes
"True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline."
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"If a book is easy and fits nicely into all your language conventions and thought forms, then you probably will not grow much from reading it. It may be entertaining, but not enlarging to your understanding. It’s the hard books that count. Raking is easy, but all you get is leaves; digging is hard, but you might find diamonds."
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"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, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"The student can read as fast as his mind will let him, not as slow as his eyes make him."
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"Don't try to resist the effect that a work of imaginative literature has on you."
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"The reader who fails to ponder, or at least mark, the words he does not understand is headed for disaster."
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"From your point of view as a reader, therefore, the most important words are those that give you trouble."
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"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, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"The mind can atrophy, like the muscles, if it is not used."
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"In short, we can only learn from our "betters"."
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business."
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"Mathematics is one of the major modern mysteries. Perhaps it is the leading one, occupying a place in our society similar to the religious mysteries of another age. If we want to know something about what our age is all about, we should have some understanding of what mathematics is, and of how the mathematician operates and thinks."
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"You must be able to say "I understand," before you can say "I agree," or "I disagree," or "I suspend judgment."
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"... 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, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it."
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"We are not told, or not told early enough so that it sinks in, that mathematics is a language, and that we can learn it like any other, including our own. We have to learn our own language twice, first when we learn to speak it, second when we learn to read it. Fortunately, mathematics has to be learned only once, since it is almost wholly a written language."
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
"... 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, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading