How to Read a Book Quotes

“Reading, like unaided discovery, is learning from an absent teacher.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“Plato and Aristotle here give us advice that most people ignore. Most people think that winning the argument is what matters, not learning the truth. He who regards conversation as a battle can win only by being an antagonist, only by disagreeing successfully, whether he is right or wrong. The reader who approaches a book in this spirit reads it only to find something he can disagree with. For the disputatious and the contentious, a bone can always be found to pick a quarrel over. It makes no difference whether the bone is really a chip on your own shoulder. In a conversation that a reader has with a book in the privacy of his own study, there is nothing to prevent the reader from seeming to win the argument. He can dominate the situation. The author is not there to defend himself. If all he wants is the empty satisfaction of seeming to show the author up, the reader can get it readily. He scarcely has to read the book through to get it. Glancing at the first few pages will suffice. But if he realizes that the only profit in conversation, with living or dead teachers, is what one can learn from them, if he realizes that you win only by gaining knowledge, not by knocking the other fellow down, he may see the futility of mere contentiousness. We are not saying that a reader should not ultimately disagree and try to show where the author is wrong. We are saying only that he should be as prepared to agree as to disagree. Whichever he does should be motivated by one consideration alone—the facts, the truth about the case. More than honesty is required here. It goes without saying that a reader should admit a point when he sees it. But he also should not feel whipped by having to agree with an author, instead of dissenting. If he feels that way, he is inveterately disputatious. In the light of this second maxim, his problem is seen to be emotional rather than intellectual. On”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“You must be able
to say, with reasonable certainty, "I understand," before you can say any one of the
following things: "I agree," or "I disagree," or "I suspend Judgment.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: A Guide to Reading the Great Books

“. . . if we lack resources within ourselves, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. And when we cease to grow, we begin to die.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“If one could enumerate all the essentials which a sound educational program consider, I would say that the techniques of communication, which make for literacy, are our first obligation, and more so in a cemocracy than in any other kind of society, because it depends on a literate electorate.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“But we could not live in this world if we were not able, from time to time, to get away from it.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“We must in such a way, when reading a story, that we let it act on us. We must allow it to move us, we must let it do whatever work it wants to do on us. We must somehow make ourselves open to it.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: A Guide to Reading the Great Books

“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 we must escape from reality, it should be to a deeper, or greater, reality. This is the reality of our inner life, of our own unique vision of the world.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Thus we can roughly define what we mean by the art of reading as follows: the process whereby a mind, with nothing to operate on but the symbols of the readable matter, and with no help from outside,I elevates itself by the power of its own operations. The mind passes from understanding less to understanding more. The skilled operations that cause this to happen are the various acts that constitute the art of reading.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“If words could not be used ambiguously, if, in short, each word was an ideal term, language would be a diaphanous medium.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“At various times in the history of education, a distinction has been made between learning through instruction and learning through discovery.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to read a book

“the process by which a person's mind, with nothing to function with but the symbols of the reading matter, and without any outside help[1], rises through the power of its own functioning.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to read a book

“Suppose even that it is understood enough to know that it is not understood, which, unfortunately, does not always happen. It is known that the book means something more than what is understood, and therefore that it contains something that can increase our understanding.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to read a book

“In the first case, we may have obtained information, but we may not have increased our understanding. If the book is completely intelligible from cover to cover, then the author and the reader are like two minds with the same frame. The symbols on the page simply express the common understanding that the reader and writer shared before they met.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to read a book

“The reason is that there are two possible relationships between the brain and the book, not just one, and these two relationships are illustrated by the two different experiences that can be had when reading the book.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to read a book

“One reason for this is that the media are designed in such a way that thinking seems unnecessary (albeit superficial).”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to read a book

“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

“to Read a Book was first published in the early months of 1940.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“But in order to forget them as separate acts, you have to learn them first as separate acts.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“In either case, you are not doing the job of reading that the book requires. That is done in only one way. Without external help of any sort, you go to work on the book. With nothing but the power of your own mind, you operate on the symbols before you in such a way that you gradually lift yourself from a state of understanding less to one of understanding more.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“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

“Some writers have excellent “control”; they know exactly what they want to convey, and they convey it precisely and accurately”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“Perhaps we would all like to love more richly than we do. Many novels are about love—most are, perhaps—and it gives us pleasure to identify with the loving characters. They are free, and we are not. But we may not want to admit this; for to do so might make us feel, consciously, that our own loves are inadequate.”
― Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“It is worth emphasizing, therefore, that it is precisely comprehension in reading that this book seeks to improve. You cannot comprehend a book without reading it analytically; analytical reading, as we have noted, is undertaken primarily for the sake of comprehension (or understanding).”
― Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

“II. SYNTOPICAL READING OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHY AMASSED IN STAGE I 1. Inspect the books already identified as relevant to your subject in Stage I in order to find the most relevant passages. 2. Bring the authors to terms by constructing a neutral terminology of the subject that all, or the great majority, of the authors can be interpreted as employing, whether they actually employ the words or not. 3. Establish a set of neutral propositions for all of the authors by framing a set of questions to which all or most of the authors can be interpreted as giving answers, whether they actually treat the questions explicitly or not. 4. Define the issues, both major and minor ones, by ranging the opposing answers of authors to the various questions on one side of an issue or another. You should remember that an issue does not always exist explicitly between or among authors, but that it sometimes has to be constructed by interpretation of the authors’ views on matters that may not have been their primary concern. 5. Analyze the discussion by ordering the questions and issues in such a way as to throw maximum light on the subject. More general issues should precede less general ones, and relations among issues should be clearly indicated.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

“I. SURVEYING THE FIELD PREPARATORY TO SYNTOPICAL READING 1. Create a tentative bibliography of your subject by recourse to library catalogues, advisors, and bibliographies in books. 2. Inspect all of the books on the tentative bibliography to ascertain which are germane to your subject, and also to acquire a clearer idea of the subject.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

“STEP 5 IN SYNTOPICAL READING: ANALYZING THE DISCUSSION”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

“STEP 4 IN SYNTOPICAL READING: DEFINING THE ISSUES”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book