Quotes from Mortimer J. Adler

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.

If you have not been able to show that the author is uninformed, misinformed, or illogical on relevant matters, you simply cannot disagree. You must agree. You cannot say, as so many students and others do, "I find nothing wrong with your premises, and no errors in reasoning, but I don't agree with your conclusions." All you can possibly mean by saying something like that is that you do not like the conclusions. You

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.

Ask questions while you read—questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading.

Knowing the rules of an art is not the same as having the habit.

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.

But in order to forget them as separate acts, you have to learn them first as separate acts.

Reading as Learning: The Difference Between Learning by Instruction and Learning by Discovery

We ought to desire whatever is really good for us and nothing else.

Uma montanha de fatos [...] pode servir de obstáculo ao entendimento.

Não precisamos saber tudo sobre determinada coisa para que possamos entendê-la.

O ato de empacotar ideias e opiniões intelectuais é uma atividade à qual algumas das mentes mais brilhantes se dedicam com grande diligência.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is not the stretching that tires you, but the frustration of stretching unsuccessfully because you lack the skill to stretch effectively.

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.

A good speed reading course should therefore teach you to read at many different speeds, not just one speed that is faster than anything you can manage now. It should enable you to vary your rate of reading in accordance with the nature and complexity of the material.

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.

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.

Concentration is another name for what we have called activity in reading. The good reader reads actively, with concentration.

An expository book is one that conveys knowledge primarily, "knowledge" being construed broadly.