Quotes from Charles Van Doren

I never wanted to see another quiz show.

Because the world is radically new, the ideal encyclopedia should be radical, too.

I've learned a lot about good and evil. They are not always what they appear to be.

My total winnings after 14 appearances were $129,000.

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.

I worked hard at memorizing lists of facts and figures, and carried with me a book of facts.

I was involved, deeply involved, in a deception... I have deceived my friends - and I had millions of them.

I would give almost anything I have to reverse the course of my life in the last three years…. I have deceived my friends, and I had millions of them.

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.

The last part, the part you're now approaching, was for Aristotle the most important for happiness.

you have to understand in order to disagree.

But knowledge is not as much a prerequisite to understanding as is commonly supposed. 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 understanding as too few.

they are able to forgive themselves, as a wise man once said, for being human. That is knowing that life is hard and virtue rare, they keep the ancient faith that it is better to love than to hate, to live fully even if imperfectly.

Full ownership of a book only comes when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it—which comes to the same thing—is by writing in it.

beginning of this book that the instruction in reading that it provides applies to anything you have to or want to read. However,

He recognized that, first, the rich are always desirous of governing for their own benefit, and second that the people can always turn against them and become a mob, taking things into its own hands. As always, the mean between extremes is to be sought.

we can learn only from our "betters." We must know who they are and how to learn from them.

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.

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.

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).

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.

I cannot take back one word or action; the past does not change for anyone.

I hoped that it would be possible to slide slowly from my public life back to the life of teaching and writing that I had always wanted. But things didn't work out that way.

The last part, the part you're now approaching, was for Aristotle the most important for happiness.