The Well-Educated Mind Quotes

“The goal of classical self-education is this: not merely to “stuff” facts into your head, but to understand them. Incorporate them into your mental framework. Reflect on their meaning for the internal life.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“The idea that fast reading is good reading is a twentieth-century weed, springing out of the stony farmland cultivated by the computer manufacturers.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“The initial small step is simple: Rather than making a sweeping determination to tackle the Great Books (all of them), decide to begin on one of the reading lists in Part II. As you read each book, you’ll follow the pattern of the trivium. First you’ll try to understand the book’s basic structure and argument; next, you’ll evaluate the book’s assertions; finally, you’ll form an opinion about the book’s ideas. You’ll have to exercise these three skills of reading—understanding, analysis, and evaluation—differently for each kind of book.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“Yet because we can read the newspaper or Time or Stephen King without difficulty, we tend to think that we should be able to go directly into Homer or Henry James without any further preparation. And when we stumble, grow confused or weary, we take this as proof of our mental inadequacy: We’ll never be able to read the Great Books.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“As you read, you should follow this three-part process: jot down specific phrases, sentences, and paragraphs as you come across them; when you’ve finished your reading, go back and write a brief summary about what you’ve learned; and then write your own reactions, questions, and thoughts.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“When you read, you develop wisdom—or, in Mortimer Adler’s words, “become enlightened.” “To be informed,” Adler writes in How to Read a Book, “is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“Technology can do a great deal to make information gathering easier, but it can do little to simplify the gathering of wisdom.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“No one likes to be condescended to, so it’s hardly surprising that so many high school students develop a loathing for the modernist novels they’re forced to read in senior English and go to the movies instead. (Movies have plots, after all.) They’re being good postmodernists.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“Technology can do a great deal to make information gathering easier, but it can do little to simplify the gathering of wisdom. Information washes over us like a sea, and recedes without leaving its traces behind. Wrestling with truth, as the story of Jacob warns us, is a time-consuming process that marks us forever.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“The first task of self-education is not the reading of Plato, but the finding of thirty minutes in which you can devote yourself to thought, rather than to activity.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“Self-education begins where school education ends,” she wrote sternly.3”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“practice this skill with this book.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“Classical self-education demands that you understand, evaluate, and react to ideas. In your journal, you will record your own summaries of your reading; this is your tool for understanding the ideas you read. This—the mastery of facts—is the first stage of classical education.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“In fact, reading is a discipline: like running regularly, or meditating, or taking voice lessons. Any able adult can run across the backyard, but this ability to put one foot in front of another shouldn’t make him think that he can tackle a marathon without serious, time-consuming training. Most of us can manage to sing “Happy Birthday” or the Doxology when called for, but this doesn’t incline us to march down to the local performing arts center and try out for the lead in Aida. Yet because we can read the newspaper or Time or Stephen King without difficulty, we tend to think that we should be able to go directly into Homer or Henry James without any further preparation. And when we stumble, grow confused or weary, we take this as proof of our mental inadequacy: We’ll never be able to read the Great Books. The truth is that the study of literature requires different skills than reading for pleasure. The inability to tackle, unaided, a list of Great Books and stick to the project doesn’t demonstrate mental inadequacy—just a lack of preparation.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

“This is a book. Only make-believe. Remember?”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had