Quotes from Mortimer J. Adler

There are many paragraphs in any book that do not express an argument at all—perhaps not even part of one.

Chronos is the Greek word for time, topos

RULE 7, as follows: FIND IF YOU CAN THE PARAGRAPHS IN A BOOK THAT STATE ITS IMPORTANT ARGUMENTS; BUT IF THE ARGUMENTS ARE NOT THUS EXPRESSED, YOUR TASK IS TO CONSTRUCT THEM, BY TAKING A SENTENCE FROM THIS PARAGRAPH, AND ONE FROM THAT, UNTIL YOU HAVE GATHERED TOGETHER THE SEQUENCE OF SENTENCES THAT STATE THE PROPOSITIONS THAT COMPOSE THE ARGUMENT.

To get technical for a moment, we may say that these rules have a grammatical and a logical aspect. The grammatical aspect is the one that deals with words. The logical step deals with their meanings or, more precisely, with terms. So far as communication is concerned, both steps are indispensable. If language is used without thought, nothing is being communicated. And thought or knowledge cannot be communicated without language. As

RULE 8. FIND OUT WHAT THE AUTHOR'S SOLUTIONS ARE.

RULE 9. 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.

2) You must grasp the unity of the whole work.

Francis Bacon once remarked that "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." Reading a book analytically is chewing and digesting it.

The mistake here is to suppose that receiving communication is like receiving a blow or a legacy or a judgment from the court. On the contrary, the reader or listener is much more like the catcher in a game of baseball.

the unity of a story is always in its plot.

to Read a Book was first published in the early months of 1940.

RULE 10, and it can be expressed thus: WHEN YOU DISAGREE, DO SO REASONABLY, AND NOT DISPUTATIOUSLY OR CONTENTIOUSLY.

RULE 11, therefore, can be stated as follows: RESPECT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND MERE PERSONAL OPINION BY GIVING REASONS FOR ANY CRITICAL JUDGMENT YOU MAKE.

Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.

3) You must not only reduce the whole to its simplest unity, but you must also discover how that whole is constructed out of all its parts.

If we must escape from reality, it should be to a deeper, or greater, reality. This is the reality of our inner life, of our own unique vision of the world.

The parts of fiction are the various steps that the author takes to develop his plot—the details of characterization and incident.

Applying the distinction between real knowledge and mere opinion to himself as well as to the author. Thus the reader must do more than make judgments of agreement or disagreement. He must give reasons for them.

To regard anyone except yourself as responsible for your judgment is to be a slave, not a free man. It

You will also find authors who do not know the difference between theory and practice, just as there are novelists who do not know the difference between fiction and sociology.

Knowledge, if you please, consists in those opinions that can be defended, opinions for which there is evidence of one kind or another. If we really know something, in this sense, we must believe that we can convince others of what we know. Opinion, in the sense in which we have been employing the word, is unsupported judgment.

The first division is between playful and serious conversations. By playful conversation, I mean all forms of talk that have no set purpose, no objective to achieve, no controlling direction. In addition, like play itself, which is that form of human activity in which we engage purely for the pleasure inherent in the activity itself, conversation that is playful in intent rather than seriously motivated is conversation that is enjoyable for its own sake, and not pursued

1) The elements of fiction are its episodes and incidents, its characters, and their thoughts, speeches, feelings, and actions. Each of these is an element in the world the author creates. By manipulating these elements, the author tells his story.

Insufficient respect for mystery leads to intellectual suicide; insufficient penetration of mystery leads to shallowness and despair.