Quotes from Mortimer J. Adler

4. WHAT OF IT? If the book has given you information, you must ask about its significance. Why does the author think it is important to know these things? Is it important to you to know them? And if the book has not only informed you, but also enlightened you, it is necessary to seek further enlightenment by asking what else follows, what is further implied or suggested

intelligent action depends on knowledge. Knowledge

For those of us who are no longer in school, we observed, it is necessary, if we want to go on learning and discovering, to know how to make books teach us well. In that situation, if we want to go on learning, then we must know how to learn from books, which are absent teachers.

The four questions stated above summarize the whole obligation of a reader. They apply to anything worth reading—a book or an article or even an advertisement.

There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well.

The questions answered by inspectional reading are: first, what kind of book is it? second, what is it about as a whole? and third, what is the structural order of the work whereby the author develops his conception or understanding of that general subject matter?

A book is a work of art. (Again

The first is: if you can, read more than one history of an event or period that interests you. The second is: read a history not only to learn what really happened at a particular time and place in the past, but also to learn the way men act in all times and places, especially now.

RULE 1. YOU MUST KNOW WHAT KIND OF BOOK YOU ARE READING, AND YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS AS EARLY IN THE PROCESS AS POSSIBLE, PREFERABLY BEFORE YOU BEGIN TO READ.

A good historian must combine the talents of the storyteller and the scientist. He must know what is likely to have happened as well as what some witnesses or writers said actually did happen.

He is familiar with their ambiguity and he has grown accustomed to the variation in their meanings as they occur in this context or that.

One reason for this is that the media are designed in such a way that thinking seems unnecessary (albeit superficial).

Dado que toda a leitura consiste em uma atividade, então toda a leitura tem de ser ativa. A leitura totalmente passiva é algo impossível - afinal, não conseguimos ler com os olhos paralisados e com a mente adormecida.

RULE 2. STATE THE UNITY OF THE WHOLE BOOK IN A SINGLE SENTENCE, OR AT MOST A FEW SENTENCES (A SHORT PARAGRAPH).

o leitor ou ouvinte são como o apanhador (catcher) num jogo de beisebol.

Read biography as history and as the cause of history; take all autobiographies with a grain of salt; and never forget that you must not argue with a book until you fully understand what it is saying.

Happiness, as Aristotle says, is the quality of a whole life. He means whole not only in a temporal sense but also in terms of all the aspects from which a life can be viewed

RULE 3. SET FORTH THE MAJOR PARTS OF THE BOOK, AND SHOW HOW THESE ARE ORGANIZED INTO A WHOLE, BY BEING ORDERED TO ONE ANOTHER AND TO THE UNITY OF THE WHOLE.

Thus the most important thing to know, when reading any report of current happenings, is who is writing the report. What is involved here is not so much an acquaintance with the reporter himself as with the kind of mind he has.

No es necesario saberlo todo acerca de un tema para comprenderlo; en muchas ocasiones, la existencia de demasiados hechos representa un obstáculo tan grande como la existencia de demasiados pocos. En la actualidad vivimos inundados de hechos, en detrimento de la comprensión.

1. What does the author want to prove? 2. Whom does he want to convince? 3. What special knowledge does he assume? 4. What special language does he use? 5. Does he really know what he is talking about?

Any good argument can be put into a nutshell. There

RULE 4. FIND OUT WHAT THE AUTHOR'S PROBLEMS WERE.

Not simply by following an author's arguments, but only by meeting them as well, can the reader ultimately reach significant agreement or disagreement with his author.