Quotes About Insight

Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.

What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business.

Getting more information is learning, and so is coming to understand what you did not understand before. But there is an important difference between these two kinds of learning.

Think of yourself as a detective looking for clues to a book's general theme or idea, alert for anything that will make it clearer. Heeding the suggestions we have made will help you sustain this attitude. You will be surprised to find out how much time you will save, pleased to see how much more you will grasp, and relieved to discover how much easier it can be than you supposed.

Perhaps you are beginning to see how essential a part of reading it is to be perplexed and know it. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature. If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess.

A mind not agitated by good questions cannot appreciate the significance of even the best answers. It is easy enough to learn the answers. But to develop actively inquisitive minds, alive with real questions, profound questions—that is another story.

O esclarecimento só ocorre quando, além de saber o que o autor escreveu, você também sabe o que ele quis dizer com o que escreveu e por que escreveu o que escreveu.

If you read for understanding, reading for information will usually take care of itself.

Analytical reading is preeminently for the sake of understanding

Informar-se é simplesmente saber que algo é um fato. Esclarecer-se é saber, além de que algo é um fato, do que se trata esse fato: por que ele é assim, quais as conexões que possui com outros fatos, em quais aspectos são iguais, em quais aspectos são diferentes etc.

Ensino é] descoberta com auxílio

intelligent action depends on knowledge. Knowledge

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

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

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

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

become at home in this imaginary world; know it as if you were an observer on the scene; become a member of its population, willing to befriend its characters, and able to participate in its happenings by sympathetic insight, as you would do in the actions and sufferings of a friend.

don't criticize imaginative writing until you fully appreciate what the author has tried to make you experience.

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.

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

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

Reading, like unaided discovery, is learning from an absent teacher.

Se o livro lhe é perfeitamente inteligível - do começo ao fim -, então o autor e você são como mentes fabricadas a partir do mesmo molde. Os símbolos impressos seriam meras expressões do entendimento que já lhes era comum antes mesmo de vocês se conhecerem.