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April 30 - May 19, 2022
Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.
In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away.
Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.
RULE 1. YOU MUST KNOW WHAT KIND OF BOOK YOU ARE READING, AND YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS AS EARLY IN THE PROCESS AS POSSIBLE, PREFERABLY BEFORE YOU BEGIN TO READ.
There is so much social science in some contemporary novels, and so much fiction in much of sociology, that it is hard to keep them apart.
One reason why titles and prefaces are ignored by many readers is that they do not think it important to classify the book they are reading. They do not follow this first rule of analytical reading.
RULE 2. STATE THE UNITY OF THE WHOLE BOOK IN A SINGLE SENTENCE, OR AT MOST A FEW SENTENCES (A SHORT PARAGRAPH).
RULE 3. SET FORTH THE MAJOR PARTS OF THE BOOK, AND SHOW HOW THESE ARE ORGANIZED INTO A WHOLE, BY BEING ORDERED TO ONE ANOTHER AND TO THE UNITY OF THE WHOLE.
RULE 4. FIND OUT WHAT THE AUTHOR’S PROBLEMS WERE.
A term is not a word—at least, not just a word without further qualifications.
If language is used without thought, nothing is being communicated.
The trouble with most readers is that they simply do not pay enough attention to words to locate their difficulties.
If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess.
Any good argument can be put into a nutshell.
Ordinary conversations between persons who confront each other are good only when they are carried on civilly.
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.”
You are responsive to the extent that you follow what has been said and note the intention that prompts it. But you also have the responsibility of taking a position. When you take it, it is yours, not the author’s.
RESPECT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND MERE PERSONAL OPINION BY GIVING REASONS FOR ANY CRITICAL JUDGMENT YOU MAKE.
Knowledge, if you please, consists in those opinions that can be defended, opinions for which there is evidence of one kind or another.
The first thing a reader can say is that he understands or that he does not. In fact, he must say he understands, in order to say more. If he does not understand, he should keep his peace and go back to work on the book.
Issues about matters of fact or policy—issues about the way things are or should be—are real in this sense only when they are based on a common understanding of what is being said.
Since men are animals as well as rational, it is necessary to acknowledge the emotions you bring to a dispute, or those that arise in the course of it.
you must make your own assumptions explicit. You must know what your prejudices—that is, your prejudgments—are.
The ideal should never be expected from human beings.
To say that an author is uninformed is to say that he lacks some piece of knowledge that is relevant to the problem he is trying to solve. Notice here that unless the knowledge, if possessed by the author, would have been relevant, there is no point in making this remark.
Facts seldom come to us without some interpretation, explicit or implied.
Common experience does not have to be shared by everyone in order to be common. Common is not the same as universal.
Both common and special experience are relevant to the reading of history books. This is because history partakes both of the fictional and the scientific.
Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.
When we read history, we want the truth in some sense, and we have a right to complain if we do not get it. When we read a novel we want a story that must be true only in the sense that it could have happened in the world of characters and events that the novelist has created, and re-created in us.
As E. B. White once remarked, “A despot doesn’t fear eloquent writers preaching freedom—he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.”
A work of fine art is “fine” not because it is “refined” or “finished,” but because it is an end (finis, Latin, means end) in itself.
All of this comes down to the same point: you must finish a story in order to be able to say that you have read it well.
Fiction seems to be a necessity for human beings. Why is this?
Indeed, if we stop to think of it, almost all that remains of the Peloponnesian War is Thucydides’ account of it.
Let us sum up these two suggestions for reading history. The first is: if you can, read more than one history of an event or period that interests you. The second is: read a history not only to learn what really happened at a particular time and place in the past, but also to learn the way men act in all times and places, especially now.
A good historian must combine the talents of the storyteller and the scientist.
He must know what is likely to have happened as well as what some witnesses or writers said actually did happen.
History suggests the possible, for it describes things that have already been done. If they have been done, perhaps they can be done again—or perhaps they can be avoided.
scholarly book does not have to be dull.
In fact, much of what anyone writes on any subject is autobiographical.
Read biography as history and as the cause of history; take all autobiographies with a grain of salt; and never forget that you must not argue with a book until you fully understand what it is saying.
But we do have an obligation, as human beings and as citizens, to try to understand the world around us.
Ideally, a reporter, of whatever kind, is a clear glass in which reality is reflected—or through which it shines.
This amounts to asking a series of questions about any material dealing with current events. The questions are these: 1. What does the author want to prove? 2. Whom does he want to convince? 3. What special knowledge does he assume? 4. What special language does he use? 5. Does he really know what he is talking about?
By a scientific book, we mean the report of findings or conclusions in some field of research, whether carried on experimentally in a laboratory or by observations of nature in the raw.
The problem is partly this. 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.
A mind not agitated by good questions cannot appreciate the significance of even the best answers.
It is good to know where the true mysteries are.
Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.
