Quotes from Mortimer J. Adler

não importa se o que aprendeu é um fato sobre o livro ou um fato sobre o mundo: você aprendeu apenas informações, caso tenha exercitado apenas sua memória.

terms as a skilled use of words for the sake of communicating knowledge.

A primeira ignorância é a do analfabeto, isto é, do sujeito incapaz de ler. A segunda ignorância é a do sujeito que leu muitos livros, mas os leu de maneira incorreta.

Good controversy should not be a quarrel about assumptions

RULE 5. FIND THE IMPORTANT WORDS AND THROUGH THEM COME TO TERMS WITH THE AUTHOR.

Just as teaching will not avail unless there is a reciprocal activity of being taught, so no author, regardless of his skill in writing, can achieve communication without a reciprocal skill on the part of readers.

conceiving the reader as conversing with the author, as talking back. After he has said, "I understand but I disagree," he can make the following remarks to the author: (1) "You are uninformed"; (2) "You are misinformed"; (3) "You are illogical—your reasoning is not cogent"; (4) "Your analysis is incomplete.

Some writers have excellent "control"; they know exactly what they want to convey, and they convey it precisely and accurately

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.

Every field of knowledge has its own technical vocabulary.

The book consists of language written by someone for the sake of communicating something to you. Your sucess in reading it is determined by the extent to which you recieve everything the writer intended to communicate.

you have to discover the meaning of a word you do not understand by using the meanings of all the other words in the context that you do understand.

His propositions are nothing but expressions of personal opinion unless they are supported by reasons.

your primary obligation is not to become competent in the subject matter but instead to understand the problem.

we want to know not merely what his propositions are, but also why he thinks we should be persuaded to accept them.

Even a cursory perusal reveals a very great range of reference. There is hardly a single human action that has not been called—in one way or another—an act of love. Nor is the range confined to the human sphere. If you proceed far enough in your reading, you will find that love has been attributed to almost everything in the universe; that is, everything that exists has been said by someone either to love or to be loved—or both.

Expository books try to convey knowledge—knowledge about experiences that the reader has had or could have. Imaginative ones try to communicate an experience itself—one that the reader can have or share only by reading

One should not have to spend four years in graduate school in order to learn how to read. Four years of graduate school, in addition to twelve years of preparatory education and four years of college—that adds up to twenty full years of schooling. It should not take that long to learn to read. Something is very wrong if it does.

RULE 5. FIND THE IMPORTANT WORDS AND COME TO TERMS. The sixth rule can be expressed thus: RULE 6. MARK THE MOST IMPORTANT SENTENCES IN A BOOK AND DISCOVER THE PROPOSITIONS THEY CONTAIN. The seventh rule is this: RULE 7. LOCATE OR CONSTRUCT THE BASIC ARGUMENTS IN THE BOOK BY FINDING THEM IN THE CONNECTION OF SENTENCES.

effectively? Yes and no. Up to the fifth and sixth grade, reading, on the whole, is effectively taught and well learned. To that level

Reading a book is a kind of conversation. You may think it is not conversation at all, because the author does all the talking and you have nothing to say. If you think that, you do not realize your full obligation as a reader—and you are not grasping your opportunities.

But the heart of his communication lies in the major affirmations and denials he is making, and the reasons he gives for so doing.

We must act 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.

State in your own words!" That suggests the best test we know for telling whether you have understood the proposition or propositions in the sentence. If, when you are asked to explain what the author means by a particular sentence, all you can do is repeat his very words, with some minor alterations in their order, you had better suspect that you do not know what he means. Ideally, you should be able to say the same thing in totally different words.