Quotes About Analysis

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The year after How to Read a Book was published, a parody of it appeared under the title How to Read Two Books; and Professor I. A. Richards wrote a serious treatise entitled How to Read a Page.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

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

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.

The first thing to do when you have amassed your bibliography is to inspect all of the books on your list. You should not read any of them analytically before inspecting all of them.

STEP 2 IN SYNTOPICAL READING: BRINGING THE AUTHORS TO TERMS

STEP 4 IN SYNTOPICAL READING: DEFINING THE ISSUES

College will probably destroy your love for poetry. Hours of boring analysis, dissection, and criticism will see to that. College will also expose you to all manner of literature—much of it transcendent works of magic that you must devour; some of it utter dreck that you must avoid like the plague.

The deniers did not decide that climate change is a left-wing conspiracy by uncovering some covert socialist plot. They arrived at this analysis by taking a hard look at what it would take to lower global emissions as drastically and as rapidly as climate science demands.

But just because it's a forty-sixth-order derivative equation or something doesn't mean that I can't work out which side of that equation is the guilty one.

Accurate analysis of over 25,000 men and women who had experienced failure, disclosed the fact that lack of decision was near the head of the list of the 30 major causes of failure. This is no mere statement of a theory— it is a fact. Procrastination

Only by analyzing the melody to locate the tonic can a key signature be identified as major or minor.