How to Read a Book Quotes

“History is the story of what led up to now. It is the present that interests us—that and the future. The future will be partly determined by the present. Thus, you can learn something about the future, too, from a historian, even from one who like Thucydides lived more than two thousand years ago.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“Because theories of history differ, and because a historian’s theory affects his account of events, it is necessary to read more than one account of the history of an event or period if we want to understand it. Indeed, this is the first rule of reading history.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“Another set of philosophical questions concerns change or becoming rather than being. Of the things in our experience to which we would unhesitatingly attribute existence, we would also say that all of them are subject to change. They come into being and pass away; while in being, most of them move from one place to another; and many of them change in quantity or in quality: they become larger or smaller, heavier or lighter; or, like the ripening apple and the aging beefsteak, they change in color.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“A theoretical book can solve its own problems. But 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.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“The great writers have always been great readers, but that does not mean that they read all the books that, in their day, were listed as the indispensable ones. In many cases, they read fewer books than are now required in most of our colleges, but what they did read, they read well. Because they had mastered these books, they became peers with their authors. They were entitled to become authorities in their own right.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“We hope you have not made the error of supposing that to criticize is always to disagree. That is a popular misconception. To agree is just as much an exercise of critical judgment on your part as to disagree. You can be just as wrong in agreeing as in disagreeing. To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“The second is the ignorance of those who have misread many books. They are, as Alexander Pope rightly calls them, bookful blockheads, ignorantly read. 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, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“If you remember what an author says, you have learned something from reading him. If what he says is true, you have even learned something about the world. But whether it is a fact about the book or a fact about the world that you have learned, you have gained nothing but information if you have exercised only your memory. You have not been enlightened. 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

“Good books are over your head; they would not be good for you if they were not.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“State it in your own words!' This suggests the best test we know of to tell whether you have understood the proposition or propositions of a sentence."… "But if it becomes clear that you are unable to part with the author's words, it shows that only words have been conveyed to you, not thoughts or knowledge.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, 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. When we speak of a man as skilled in any way, we do not mean that he knows the rules of making or doing something, but that he possesses the habit of making or doing it.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“What is the right approach? The answer lies in an important and helpful rule of reading that is generally overlooked. That rule is simply this: 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.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“Most important of all, it is an activity of the mind that is essential to education, the central aim of which has always been recognized, from Socrates’ day down to our own, as the freeing of the mind through the discipline of wonder.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“Reading as Learning: The Difference Between Learning by Instruction and Learning by Discovery”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“We want to mention one omission that may strike some readers as unfortunate. The list contains only Western authors and books; there are no Chinese, Japanese, or Indian works. There are several reasons for this. One is that we are not par­ ticularly knowledgeable outside of the Western literary tradi­ tion, and our recommendations would carry little weight. Another is that there is in the East no single tradition, as there is in the West, and we would have to be learned in all Eastern traditions in order to do the job well. There are very few scholars who have this kind of acquaintance with all the works of the East. Third, there is something to be said for knowing your own tradition before trying to understand that of other parts of the world. Many persons who today attempt to read such books as the I Ching or the Bhagavad-Gita are baffled, not only because of the inherent difficulty of such works, but also because they have not learned to read well by practicing on the more accessible works-more accessible to them-of their own culture. And finally, the list is long enough as it is.”
― Charles Van Doren Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Note here the close relation between reading and listening. If we ignore the minor difference between these two ways of receiving communication, we can say that reading and listening are the same art - the art of being taught.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Liberal Education

“Montaigne speaks of "an abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it." The first is the ignorance of those who, not knowing their ABC's, cannot read at all. The second is the ignorance of those who have misread many books. They are, as Alexander Pope rightly calls them, bookful blockheads, ignorantle read. There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely an not well. The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly wich might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all sophomores.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to read a bookthe art of getting a liberal education

“The book consists of language written by someone for the sake of communicating something to you. Your sucess in reading it is determined by the extent to which you recieve everything the writer intended to communicate.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Though, strictly speaking, there can be no absolutely passive reading, many people think that, as compared with writing and speaking, which are obviously active understankings, reading and listening are entirely passive. The writer or speaker must put out some effort, but no work need be done by the reader or listener. Reading and listening are though of as receiving communication from someone who is actively engaged in giving or sending it. 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: The Art of Getting a Liberal Education

“There is a sense in wich we moderns are inudated with facts to the detriment of understanding. Onde of the reasons for this situation is that the very media we have mentioned are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements - all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully slected data and statistics - to make it easy for him to "make up his own mind" with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewre, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his minde, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and "plays back" the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having to had to think.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Liberal Education

“Every book, no matter how difficult, contains interstitial material that can be and should be read quickly; and every good book also contains matter that is difficult and should be read very slowly.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“Teachability is often confused with subservience. A person is wrongly thought to be teachable if he is passive and pliable. On the contrary, teachability is an extremely active virtue. No one is really teachable who does not freely exercise his power of independent judgment.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“FIRST STAGE OF ANALYTICAL READING, OR RULES FOR FINDING WHAT A BOOK IS ABOUT 1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter. 2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity. 3. Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole. 4. Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“The distinction between reading for information and reading for understanding is deeper than this.
(...)

What are the conditions under which this kind of reading -reading for understanding-takes place? There are two. First, there is initial inequality in understanding. The writer must be "superior" to the reader in understanding, and his book must convey in readable form the insights he possesses and his potential readers lack. Second, the reader must be able to over­ come this inequality in some degree, seldom perhaps fully, but always approaching equality with the writer. To the extent that equality is approached, clarity of communication is achieved.”
― Mortimer Jerome Adler, How to read a bookthe art of getting a liberal education

“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 understand­ ing as too few. There is a sense in which we modems are inun­ dated with facts to the detriment of understanding.”
― Mortimer Jerome Adler, How to read a bookthe art of getting a liberal education

“Children were taught to sound out the letters of the alphabet individually”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“They are thus faced with the task of achieving a superficial knowledge of the book at the same time that they are trying to understand it. That compounds the difficulty.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“Then our first effort must be to identify the actual words. Only after recognizing them individually can we begin to try to understand them, to struggle with perceiving what they mean.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading