How to Read a Book Quotes

“It is not the stretching that tires you, but the frustration of stretching unsuccessfully because you lack the skill to stretch effectively.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

“People point to a highly original painter or sculptor and say, “He isn’t following rules. He’s doing something entirely original, something that has never been done before, something for which there are no rules.” But they fail to see”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

“He is familiar with their ambiguity and he has grown accustomed to the variation in their meanings as they occur in this context or that.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

“Being informed is prerequisite to being enlightened.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

“The tremendous pleasure that can come from reading Shakespeare, for instance, was spoiled for generations of high school students who were forced to go through Julius Caesar, As You Like It, or Hamlet, scene by scene, looking up all the strange words in a glossary and studying all the scholarly footnotes. As a result, they never really read a Shakespearean play.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“The mistake here is to suppose that receiving communication is like receiving a blow or a legacy or a judgment from the court. On the contrary, the reader or listener is much more like the catcher in a game of baseball.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

“Since reading of any sort is an activity, all reading must to some degree be active. Completely passive reading is impossible; we cannot read with our eyes immobilized and our minds asleep. Hence when we contrast active with passive reading, our purpose is, first, to call attention to the fact that reading can be more or less active, and second, to point out that the more active the reading the better. One reader is better than another in proportion as he is capable of a greater range of activity in reading and exerts more effort. He is better if he demands more of himself and of the text before him.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

“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, How to Read a Book

“The year after How to Read a Book was published, a parody of it appeared under the title How to Read Two Books; and Professor I. A. Richards wrote a serious treatise entitled How to Read a Page.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

“Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

“You have not grasped a complex unity if all you know about it is how it is one. You must also know how it is many, not a many that consists of a lot of separate things, but an organized many.”
― Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Knowing the rules of an art is not the same as having the habit.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

“We must be more than a nation of functional literates. We must become a nation of truly competent readers, recognizing all that the word competent implies. Nothing less will satisfy the needs of the world that is coming.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

“O ato de empacotar ideias e opiniões intelectuais é uma atividade à qual algumas das mentes mais brilhantes se dedicam com grande diligência.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Não precisamos saber tudo sobre determinada coisa para que possamos entendê-la.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Uma montanha de fatos [...] pode servir de obstáculo ao entendimento.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“A primeira ignorância é a do analfabeto, isto é, do sujeito incapaz de ler. A segunda ignorância é a do sujeito que leu muitos livros, mas os leu de maneira incorreta.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“[...] não importa se o que aprendeu é um fato sobre o livro ou um fato sobre o mundo: você aprendeu apenas informações, caso tenha exercitado apenas sua memória.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“[...] o leitor ou ouvinte são como o apanhador (catcher) num jogo de beisebol.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Dado que toda a leitura consiste em uma atividade, então toda a leitura tem de ser ativa. A leitura totalmente passiva é algo impossível - afinal, não conseguimos ler com os olhos paralisados e com a mente adormecida.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Contanto somente como o poder de sua mente, você tem de operar os símbolos que estão diante de você a fim de elevar-se do estado de entendimento inferior ao estado de entendimento superior. Essa elevação consiste em uma leitura criteriosa - o tipo de leitura que todo o livro desafiador merece.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“[...] o professor consegue fazer muita coisa pelos seus alunos, mas quem tem que aprender são eles. O conhecimento só frutifica na mente deles caso o aprendizado ocorra.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“[Ensino é] descoberta com auxílio”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“A descoberta está para o ensino assim como o aprendizado sem professor está para o aprendizado com professor.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Os gregos tinham um nome especial nome especial para essa estranha mistura de aprendizado e estupidez - um nome que pode ser aplicado aos literatos ignorantes de todas as eras. Eles chamavam esse fenômeno de sofomania.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Estar bem informado é pré-requisito para ser esclarecido.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Informar-se é simplesmente saber que algo é um fato. Esclarecer-se é saber, além de que algo é um fato, do que se trata esse fato: por que ele é assim, quais as conexões que possui com outros fatos, em quais aspectos são iguais, em quais aspectos são diferentes etc.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“[...] não é verdade que todo o livro possa ser lido para entretenimento também pode ser lido para entendimento.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Se o livro lhe é perfeitamente inteligível - do começo ao fim -, então o autor e você são como mentes fabricadas a partir do mesmo molde. Os símbolos impressos seriam meras expressões do entendimento que já lhes era comum antes mesmo de vocês se conhecerem.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“A book is a work of art. (Again,”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book