Mortimer J Adler

1:All books will become light in proportion as you find light in them. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

2:The truly great books are the few books that are over everybody's head all of the time. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

3:There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

4:My chief reason for choosing Christianity was because the mysteries were incomprehensible. What's the point of revelation if we could figure it out ourselves? If it were wholly comprehensible, then it would just be another philosophy. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

5:If a book is easy and fits nicely into all your language conventions and thought forms, then you probably will not grow much from reading it. It may be entertaining, but not enlarging to your understanding. It's the hard books that count. Raking is easy, but all you get is leaves; digging is hard, but you might find diamonds. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

6:Television, radio, and all the sources of amusement and information that surround us in our daily lives are also artificial props. They can give us the impression that our minds are active, because we are required to react to stimuli from the outside. But the power of those external stimuli to keep us going is limited. They are like drugs. We grow used to them, and we continuously need more and more of them. Eventually, they have little or no effect. Then, if we lack resources within ourselves, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. And we we cease to grow, we begin to die. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

7:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus - Tragedies
4. Sophocles - Tragedies
5. Herodotus - Histories
6. Euripides - Tragedies
7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes - Comedies
10. Plato - Dialogues
11. Aristotle - Works
12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid - Elements
14.Archimedes - Works
15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections
16. Cicero - Works
17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil - Works
19. Horace - Works
20. Livy - History of Rome
21. Ovid - Works
22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy - Almagest
27. Lucian - Works
28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus - The Enneads
32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More - Utopia
44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays
48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton - Works
59. Molière - Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve - The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
~ Mortimer J Adler,

* WISDOM TROVE *

* NEWFULLDB 2.4M *

1:As You Like It, ~ Mortimer J Adler,

2:Books are absent teachers. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

3:one learns to do by doing. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

4:A book is a work of art. (Again, ~ Mortimer J Adler,

5:[Ensino é] descoberta com auxílio ~ Mortimer J Adler,

6:Wonder is the beginning of wisdom... ~ Mortimer J Adler,

7:Chronos is the Greek word for time, topos ~ Mortimer J Adler,

8:Find and interpreting the important words. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

9:Reading and the Democratic Ideal of Education ~ Mortimer J Adler,

10:The First Level of Reading: Elementary Reading ~ Mortimer J Adler,

11:In short, we can only learn from our "betters". ~ Mortimer J Adler,

12:intelligent action depends on knowledge. Knowledge ~ Mortimer J Adler,

13:A good rule always describes the ideal performance. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

14:Any good argument can be put into a nutshell. There ~ Mortimer J Adler,

15:Being informed is prerequisite to being enlightened. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

16:Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

17:Sometimes it feels like I'm thinking against the wind. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

18:To use a good book as a sedative is conspicuous waste. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

19:Estar bem informado é pré-requisito para ser esclarecido. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

20:The mind can atrophy, like the muscles, if it is not used. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

21:The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

22:The undemanding reader asks no questions-and gets no answers. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

23:É um erro acreditar que ler muito e ler bem são a mesma coisa. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

24:Knowing the rules of an art is not the same as having the habit. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

25:The possession of the truth is the highest goal of the human mind. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

26:True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

27:In judging a practical book, everything turns on the ends or goals. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

28:Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

29:All books will become light in proportion as you find light in them. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

30:There is no inactive learning, just as there is no inactive reading. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

31:All books will become light in proportion as you find light in them. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

32:Uma montanha de fatos [...] pode servir de obstáculo ao entendimento. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

33:[...] a arte de ler é a técnica de apanhar qualquer tipo de comunicação. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

34:Human beings are curious, and especially curious about other human beings. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

35:Now there is no other way of forming a habit of operation than by operating. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

36:[...] o leitor ou ouvinte são como o apanhador (catcher) num jogo de beisebol. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

37:Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author. Presumably ~ Mortimer J Adler,

38:Good books are over your head; they would not be good for you if they were not. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

39:Não precisamos saber tudo sobre determinada coisa para que possamos entendê-la. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

40:Don't try to resist the effect that a work of imaginative literature has on you. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

41:Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

42:Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature. If ~ Mortimer J Adler,

43:Do not say you agree, disagree, or suspend judgement until you can say “I understand ~ Mortimer J Adler,

44:A person who has read widely but not well deserves to be pitied rather than praised. As ~ Mortimer J Adler,

45:The truly great books are the few books that are over everybody's head all of the time. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

46:To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

47:When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies, ~ Mortimer J Adler,

48:If you read for understanding, reading for information will usually take care of itself. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

49:The student can read as fast as his mind will let him, not as slow as his eyes make him. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

50:The truly great books are the few books that are over everybody's head all of the time. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

51:The beauty of any work of art is related to the pleasure it gives us when we know it well. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

52:understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

53:Every book has a skeleton hidden between its covers. Your job as an analytical reader is to find it. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

54:Scientific objectivity is not the absence of initial bias. It is attained by frank confession of it. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

55:The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

56:We must become a nation of truly competent readers, recognizing all that the word competent implies. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

57:Ask questions while you read—questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

58:As Thomas Hobbes said, “If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

59:To regard anyone except yourself as responsible for your judgment is to be a slave, not a free man. It ~ Mortimer J Adler,

60:The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

61:From your point of view as a reader, therefore, the most important words are those that give you trouble. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

62:The reader who fails to ponder, or at least mark, the words he does not understand is headed for disaster. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

63:A descoberta está para o ensino assim como o aprendizado sem professor está para o aprendizado com professor. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

64:You must be able to say "I understand," before you can say "I agree," or "I disagree," or "I suspend judgment. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

65:[...] não é verdade que todo o livro possa ser lido para entretenimento também pode ser lido para entendimento. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

66:The first stage of elementary reading—reading readiness—corresponds to pre-school and kindergarten experiences. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

67:What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

68:The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

69:Great speed in reading is a dubious achievement; it is of value only if what you have to read is not worth reading. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

70:The man who knew an encyclopedia by heart would be in grave danger of incurring the title idiot savant—“learned fool. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

71:Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

72:In the case of good books,the point is not to see how many of them you can get through,but how many can get through to you. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

73:What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business. Propaganda ~ Mortimer J Adler,

74:In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

75:It is wasteful to read a book slowly that deserves only a fast reading; speed reading skills can help you solve that problem. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

76:Concentration is another name for what we have called activity in reading. The good reader reads actively, with concentration. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

77:It is only when you try to refine the obvious, and give the distinctions greater precision, that you get into difficulties. For ~ Mortimer J Adler,

78:Even when you have been somewhat enlightened by what you have read, you are called upon to continue the serach for significance. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

79:If an author does not give reasons for his propositions, they can only be treated as expressions of personal opinion on his part. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

80:TURN THE PAGES, DIPPING IN HERE AND THERE, READING A PARAGRAPH OR TWO, SOMETIMES SEVERAL PAGES IN SEQUENCE, NEVER MORE THAN THAT. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

81:Having a method without materials to which it can be applied is as useless as having the materials with no method to apply to them. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

82:In the case of good books, the goal is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

83:Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

84: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

85:In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

86:But it may be seriously questioned whether the advent of modern communications media has much enhanced our understanding of the world ~ Mortimer J Adler,

87:Francis Bacon once remarked that “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Reading ~ Mortimer J Adler,

88:Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

89: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

90:you can train yourself to follow as it moves more and more quickly across and down the page. You can do this yourself. Place your thumb and ~ Mortimer J Adler,

91:It is not the stretching that tires you, but the frustration of stretching unsuccessfully because you lack the skill to stretch effectively. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

92: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

93:Theoretical books teach you that something is the case. Practical books teach you how to do something you want to do or think you should do. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

94:O ato de empacotar ideias e opiniões intelectuais é uma atividade à qual algumas das mentes mais brilhantes se dedicam com grande diligência. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

95:The dictionary also invites a playful reading. It challenges anyone to sit down with it in an idle moment. There are worse ways to kill time. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

96:You cannot begin to deal with terms, propositions, and arguments—the elements of thought—until you can penetrate beneath the surface of language. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

97:If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you don't already possess ~ Mortimer J Adler,

98:The tragedy of being both rational and animal seems to consist in having to choose between duty and desire rather than in making any particular choice ~ Mortimer J Adler,

99:In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

100:We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

101:Being relevant simply consists in paying close attention to the point that is being talked about and saying nothing that is not significantly related to it. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

102:A good life is made by accumulating in the course of a lifetime everything that is really good and by wanting nothing that impedes or frustrates this effort. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

103:A lecture has been well described as the process whereby the notes of the teacher become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

104:...It is only obvious that teaching is a very special art, sharing withonly two other arts-argriculture and medicin-an exceptionally important characteristic. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

105:Philosophy is like science and unlike history in that it seeks general truths rather than an account of particular events, either in the near or distant past. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

106: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. To ~ Mortimer J Adler,

107:[...] 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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

108: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

109: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

110:Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

111:[...] o professor consegue fazer muita coisa pelos seus alunos, mas quem tem que aprender são eles. O conhecimento só frutifica na mente deles caso o aprendizado ocorra. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

112:Anyone who fails to consult the explanatory notes and the list of abbreviations at the beginning of a dictionary has only himself to blame if he is not able to use it well. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

113: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

114: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

115:Finally, do not try to understand every word or page of a difficult book the first time through. This is the most important rule of all; it is the essence of inspectional reading. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

116:Remember Bacon’s recommendation to the reader: “Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

117: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

118:To this day, most institutions of higher learning either do not know how to instruct students in reading beyond the elementary level, or lack the facilities and personnel to do so. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

119:Many readers fear that it would be disloyal to their commitment to stand apart and impersonally question what they are reading. Yet this is necessary whenever you read analytically. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

120:strict mathematical form, with propositions, proofs, corollaries, lemmas, scholiums, and the like. However, the subject matter of metaphysics and of morals is not very satisfactorily ~ Mortimer J Adler,

121:... always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

122:It is traditional in America to criticize the schools; for more than a century, parents, self-styled experts, and educators themselves have attacked and indicted the educational system. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

123:We hope you have not made the error of supposing that to criticize is always to disagree. (...) To agree is just as much of an exercise of critical judgment on your part as to disagree. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

124:...The first dictionaries were glossaries of Homeric words, intended to help Romans read the Iliad and Odyssey as well as other Greek literature employing the 'archaic' Homeric vocabulary. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

125:As arts, grammar and logic are concerned with language in relation to thought and thought in relation to language. That is why skill in both reading and writing is gained through these arts. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

126:Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

127:The communion that can be achieved by human conversation is of great significance for our private lives...It is the spiritual parallel of the physical union by which lovers try to become one. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

128:Reading well, which means reading actively, is thus not only a good in itself, nor is it merely a means to advancement in our work or career. It also serves to keep our minds alive and growing. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

129: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

130:You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

131:Most of us are addicted to non-active reading. The outstanding fault of the non-active or undemanding reader is his inattention to words, and his consequent failure to come to terms with the author. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

132: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

133:Men are creatures of passion and prejudice. The language they must use to communicate is an imperfect medium, clouded by emotion and colored by interest, as well as inadequately transparent for thought. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

134:Nếu không thể nhận ra những cách diễn đạt khác nhau của cùng một nhận định, hoặc không thể đưa ra một cách diễn đạt tương ứng để chứng minh là mình hiểu nhận định đó, tức là bạn không hiểu nghĩa của câu. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

135:One of the most familiar tricks of the orator or propagandist is to leave certain things unsaid, things that are highly relevant to the argument, but that might be challenged if they were made explicit. While ~ Mortimer J Adler,

136:The failure in reading -the omnipresent verbalism- of those who have not been trained in the arts of grammar and logic shows how lack of such discipline results in slavery to words rather than mastery of them. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

137: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

138:Os gregos tinham um nome especial nome especial para essa estranha mistura de aprendizado e estupidez - um nome que pode ser aplicado aos literatos ignorantes de todas as eras. Eles chamavam esse fenômeno de sofomania. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

139: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

140:We must be more than a nation of functional literates. We must become a nation of truly competent readers, recognizing all that the word competent implies. Nothing less will satisfy the needs of the world that is coming. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

141:There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

142:There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

143:adopted by Nietzsche in such works as Thus Spake Zarathustra and by certain modern French philosophers. The popularity of this style during the past century is perhaps owing to the great interest, among Western readers, in the ~ Mortimer J Adler,

144:Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

145:Many persons believe that they know how to read because they read at different speeds. But they pause and go slow over the wrong sentences. They pause over the sentences that interest them rather than the ones that puzzle them. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

146:People point to a highly original painter or sculptor and say, “He isn’t following rules. He’s doing something entirely original, something that has never been done before, something for which there are no rules.” But they fail to see ~ Mortimer J Adler,

147:My chief reason for choosing Christianity was because the mysteries were incomprehensible. What's the point of revelation if we could figure it out ourselves? If it were wholly comprehensible, then it would just be another philosophy. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

148:The human mind is as naturally sensitive to arguments as the eye is to colors. (There may be some people who are argument-blind!) But the eye will not see if it is not kept open, and the mind will not follow an argument if it is not awake. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

149:Read the book through, undeterred and undismayed by the paragraphs, footnotes, comments, and references that escape you. If you let yourself get stalled, if you allow yourself to be tripped up by any one of these stumbling blocks, you are lost. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

150:There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well. The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all sophomores. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

151: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

152:The art of reading, in short, includes all of the same skills that are involved in the art of unaided discovery: keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and, of course, an intellect trained in analysis and reflection. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

153:We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

154:If your friend wishes to read your 'Plutarch's Lives,' 'Shakespeare,' or 'The Federalist Papers,' tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat - but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

155: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

156:The ability to retain a child's view of the world with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare - and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

157:There is no more irritating fellow than the one who tries to settle an argument about communism, or justice, or freedom, by quoting from the dictionary. Lexicographers may be respected as authorities on word usage, but they are not the ultimate founts of wisdom. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

158:You will find that your comprehension of any book will be enormously increased if you only go to the trouble of finding its important words, identifying their shifting meanings, and coming to terms. Seldom does such a small change in habit have such a large effect. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

159: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

160:A good speed reading course should therefore teach you to read at many different speeds, not just one speed that is faster than anything you can manage now. It should enable you to vary your rate of reading in accordance with the nature and complexity of the material. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

161:To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

162: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

163: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

164:Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree? ~ Mortimer J Adler,

165:The writer isn’t trying not to be caught, although it sometimes seems so. Successful communication occurs in any case where what the writer wanted to have received finds its way into the reader’s possession. The writer’s skill and the reader’s skill converge upon a common end. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

166: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

167:Great speed in reading is a dubious achievement; it is of value only if what you have to read is not really worth reading. A better formula is this: Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

168:Contanto somente como o poder de sua mente, você tem de operar os símbolos que estão diante de você a fim de elevar-se do estado de entendimento inferior ao estado de entendimento superior. Essa elevação consiste em uma leitura criteriosa - o tipo de leitura que todo o livro desafiador merece. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

169:If communications were not complex, structural outlining would be unnecessary. If language were a perfect medium instead of a relatively opaque one, there would be no need for interpretation. If error and ignorance did not circumscribe truth and knowledge, we should not have to be critical. The ~ Mortimer J Adler,

170:1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter. 2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity. 3. Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole. 4. Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

171:... a practical problem can only be solved by action itself. When your practical problem is how to earn a living, a book on how to make friends and influence people cannot solve it, though it may suggest things to do. Nothing short of the doing solves the problem. It is solved only by earning a living. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

172:One constant is that, to achieve all the purposes of reading, the desideratum must be the ability to read different things at different—appropriate—speeds, not everything at the greatest possible speed. As Pascal observed three hundred years ago, “When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.” Since ~ Mortimer J Adler,

173:If a book is easy and fits nicely into all your language conventions and thought forms, then you probably will not grow much from reading it. It may be entertaining, but not enlarging to your understanding. It’s the hard books that count. Raking is easy, but all you get is leaves; digging is hard, but you might find diamonds. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

174:If a book is easy and fits nicely into all your language conventions and thought forms, then you probably will not grow much from reading it. It may be entertaining, but not enlarging to your understanding. It's the hard books that count. Raking is easy, but all you get is leaves; digging is hard, but you might find diamonds. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

175:Finally, do not try to understand every word or page of a difficult book the first time through. This is the most important rule of all; it is the essence of inspectional reading. Do not be afraid to be, or to seem to be, superficial. Race through even the hardest book. You will then be prepared to read it well the second time. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

176:The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions - simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions - and maturely wise in our replies. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

177: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

178:Mathematics is one of the major modern mysteries. Perhaps it is the leading one, occupying a place in our society similar to the religious mysteries of another age. If we want to know something about what our age is all about, we should have some understanding of what mathematics is, and of how the mathematician operates and thinks. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

179:... The person who, at any stage of a conversation, disagrees, should at least hope to reach agreement in the end. He should be as much prepared to have his own mind changed as seek to change the mind of another ... No one who looks upon disagreement as an occasion for teaching another should forget that it is also an occasion for being taught. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

180:When we speak of someone as “well-read,” we should have this ideal in mind. Too often, we use that phrase to mean the quantity rather than the quality of reading. A person who has read widely but not well deserves to be pitied rather than praised. As Thomas Hobbes said, “If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

181:That they often do not even reach it is apparent to many parents and to most educators. The reasons for the failure are many, ranging all the way from various kinds of deprivations in the home environment—economic, social, and/or intellectual (including parental illiteracy)—to personal problems of all kinds (including total revolt against “the system”). ~ Mortimer J Adler,

182:....a good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser. Not just more knowledgeable - books that provide nothing but information can produce that result. But wiser, in the sense that you are more deeply aware of the great and enduring truths of human life. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

183:We are not told, or not told early enough so that it sinks in, that mathematics is a language, and that we can learn it like any other, including our own. We have to learn our own language twice, first when we learn to speak it, second when we learn to read it. Fortunately, mathematics has to be learned only once, since it is almost wholly a written language. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

184:The tremendous pleasure that can come from reading Shakespeare, for instance, was spoiled for generations of high school students who were forced to go through Julius Caesar, As You Like It, or Hamlet, scene by scene, looking up all the strange words in a glossary and studying all the scholarly footnotes. As a result, they never really read a Shakespearean play. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

185:We are tied down, all our days and for the greater part of our days, to the commonplace. That is where contact with the great thinkers, great literature helps. In their company we are still in the ordinary world, but it is the ordinary world transfigured and seen through the eyes of wisdom and genius. And some of their genius becomes ours. . ." in The Great Conversation ~ Mortimer J Adler,

186:The trouble is that many people regard disagreement as unrelated to either teaching or being taught. They think that everything is just a matter of opinion. I have mine, and you have yours; and our right to our opinions is as inviolable as our right to private property. On such a view, communication cannot be profitable if the profit to be gained is an increase in knowledge. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

187:THE FIRST STAGE OF ANALYTICAL READING, OR RULES FOR FINDING WHAT A BOOK IS ABOUT 1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter. 2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity. 3. Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole. 4. Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

188: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

189:If you are reading in order to become a better reader, you cannot read just any book or article. You will not improve as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

190:...We must also realize-students, teachers, and laymen alike-that even when we have accomplished the task that lies before us, we will not have accomplished the whole task. We must be more than a nation of functional literates. We must become a nation of truly competent readers, recognizing all that the word competent implies. Nothing less wil satisfy the needs of the world that is coming. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

191:When you buy a book, you establish a property right in it, just as you do in clothes or furniture when you buy and pay for them. But the act of purchase is actually only the prelude to possession in the case of a book. Full ownership of a book only comes when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it—which comes to the same thing—is by writing in it. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

192:If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means. If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking an analysis yourself. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

193:If you have not been able to show that the author is uninformed, misinformed, or illogical on relevant matters, you simply cannot disagree. You must agree. You cannot say, as so many students and others do, “I find nothing wrong with your premises, and no errors in reasoning, but I don’t agree with your conclusions.” All you can possibly mean by saying something like that is that you do not like the conclusions. You ~ Mortimer J Adler,

194:Without external help of any sort, you go to work on the book. With nothing but the power of your own mind, you operate on the symbols before you in such a way that you gradually lift yourself from a state of understanding less to one of understanding more. Such elevation, accomplished by the mind working on a book, is highly skilled reading, the kind of reading that a book which challenges your understanding deserves. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

195:The best protection against propaganda of any sort is the recognition of it for what it is. Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business. Propaganda taken in that way is like a drug you do not know you are swallowing. The effect is mysterious; you do not know afterwards why you feel or think the way you do. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

196: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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

197: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 ~ Mortimer J Adler,

198:If you are reading a book that can increase your understanding, it stands to reason that not all of its words will be completely intelligible to you. If you proceed as if they were all ordinary words, all on the same level of general intelligibility as the words of a newspaper article, you will make no headway toward interpretation of the book. You might just as well be reading a newspaper, for the book cannot enlighten you if you do not try to understand it. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

199:The question, is it true? can be asked of anything we read. It is applicable to every kind of writing, in one or another sense of "truth" -- mathematical, scientific, philosophical, historial and poetical. No higher commendation can be given any work of the human mind than to praise it for the measure of truth it has achieved; by the same token, to criticize it adversely for its failure in this respect is to treat it with the seriousness that a serious work deserves. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

200:Perhaps we know more about the world than we used to, and insofar as knowledge is prerequisite to understanding, that is all to the good. But knowledge is not as much a prerequisite to understanding as is commonly supposed. We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

201:Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; if not, you probably should not be bothering with his book. But understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. 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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

202:These three rules of analytical reading—about terms, propositions, and arguments—can be brought to a head in an eighth rule, which governs the last step in the interpretation of a book’s content. More than that, it ties together the first stage of analytical reading (outlining the structure) and the second stage (interpreting the contents). The last step in your attempt to discover what a book is about was the discovery of the major problems that the author tried to solve in the course of his book. (As ~ Mortimer J Adler,

203:A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

204:Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; if not, you probably should not be bothering with his book. But understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher. He even has to be willing to argue with the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. 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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

205:The rules for reading yourself to sleep are easier to follow than are the rules for staying awake while reading. Get into bed in a comfortable position, make sure the light is inadequate enough to cause slight eyestrain, choose a book that is either terribly difficult or terribly boring—in any event, one that you do not really care whether you read or not—and you will be asleep in a few minutes. Those who are experts in relaxing with a book do not have to wait for nightfall. A comfortable chair in the library will do any time ~ Mortimer J Adler,

206:The rules for reading yourself to sleep are easier to follow than are the rules for staying awake while reading. Get into bed in a comfortable position, make sure the light is inadequate enough to cause a slight eyestrain, choose a book that is either terribly difficult or terribly boring—in any event, one that you do not really care whether you read or not—and you will be asleep in a few minutes. Those who are experts in relaxing with a book do not have to wait for nightfall. A comfortable chair in the library will do any time. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

207:The reader tries to uncover the skeleton that the book conceals. The author starts with the skeleton and tries to cover it up. His aim is to conceal the skeleton artistically or, in other words, to put flesh on the bare bones. If he is a good writer, he does not bury a puny skeleton under a mass of fat; on the other hand, neither should the flesh be too thin, so that the bones show through. If the flesh is thick enough, and if the flabbiness is avoided, the joints will be detectable and the motion of the parts will reveal the articulation. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

208:The great writers have always been great readers, but that does not mean that they read all the books that, in their day, were listed as the indispensable ones. In many cases, they read fewer books than are now required in most of our colleges, but what they did read, they read well. Because they had mastered these books, they became peers with their authors. They were entitled to become authorities in their own right. In the natural course of events, a good student frequently becomes a teacher, and so, too, a good reader becomes an author. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

209:What are the conditions under which this kind of reading—reading for understanding—takes place? There are two. First, there is initial inequality in understanding. The writer must be “superior” to the reader in understanding, and his book must convey in readable form the insights he possesses and his potential readers lack. Second, the reader must be able to overcome this inequality in some degree, seldom perhaps fully, but always approaching equality with the writer. To the extent that equality is approached, clarity of communication is achieved. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

210:the essence of tragedy is time, or rather the lack of it. There is no problem in any Greek tragedy that could not have been solved if there had been enough time, but there is never enough. Decisions, choices have to be made in a moment, there is no time to think and weigh the consequences; and, since even tragic heroes are fallible—especially fallible, perhaps—the decisions are wrong. It is easy for us to see what should have been done, but would we have been able to see in time? That is the question that you should always ask in reading any Greek tragedy. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

211:Montaigne speaks of “an abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it.” The first is the ignorance of those who, not knowing their ABC’s, cannot read at all. The second is the ignorance of those who have misread many books. They are, as Alexander Pope rightly calls them, bookful blockheads, ignorantly read. There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well. The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all sophomores. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

212:Television, radio, and all the sources of amusement and information that surround us in our daily lives are also artificial props. They can give us the impression that our minds are active, because we are required to react to stimuli from the outside. But the power of those external stimuli to keep us going is limited. They are like drugs. We grow used to them, and we continuously need more and more of them. Eventually, they have little or no effect. Then, if we lack resources within ourselves, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. And we we cease to grow, we begin to die. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

213:Television, radio, and all the sources of amusement and information that surround us in our daily lives are also artificial props. They can give us the impression that our minds are active, because we are required to react to stimuli from the outside. But the power of those external stimuli to keep us going is limited. They are like drugs. We grow used to them, and we continuously need more and more of them. Eventually, they have little or no effect. Then, if we lack resources within ourselves, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. And we we cease to grow, we begin to die. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

214:Since reading of any sort is an activity, all reading must to some degree be active. Completely passive reading is impossible; we cannot read with our eyes immobilized and our minds asleep. Hence when we contrast active with passive reading, our purpose is, first, to call attention to the fact that reading can be more or less active, and second, to point out that the more active the reading the better. 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. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

215:we must not forget that the restful experience of enjoyable beauty is not limited to the contemplation of sensible objects. We can experience it as well in the contemplation of purely intelligible objects—the contemplation of truths we understand. “Mathematics,” wrote Bertrand Russell, “rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere … without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music …” Or, as the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote in the opening line of her sonnet on Euclid, “Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

216:The trouble is that many people regard disagreement as unrelated to either teaching or being taught. They think that everything is just a matter of opinion. I have mine, and you have yours; and our right to our opinions is as inviolable as our right to private property. On such a view, communication cannot be profitable if the profit to be gained is an increase in knowledge. Conversation is hardly better than a ping-pong game of opposed opinions, a game in which no one keeps score, no one wins, and everyone is satisfied because he does not lose - that is, he ends up holding the same opinions he started with. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

217:The goods of the body are food and drink, sleep, clothing, and shelter. These are goods we need because they are indispensable for sustaining life. To be without them in sufficient quantity is a life-threating deprivation. To possess them is not only necessary, but also a source of pleasure and enjoyment.
The goods of the mind are information, knowledge, understanding and wisdom. We seek these goods not just in order to live, but in order to live well. Possessing them lifts us above the plane of animal existence, for these goods enhance our existence as human beings, as well as providing enjoyment and pleasure, ~ Mortimer J Adler,

218:The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

219:121. George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces
122. Max Planck – Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography
123. Henri Bergson – Time and Free Will; Matter and Memory; Creative Evolution; The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
124. John Dewey – How We Think; Democracy and Education; Experience and Nature; Logic; the Theory of Inquiry
125. Alfred North Whitehead – An Introduction to Mathematics; Science and the Modern World; The Aims of Education and Other Essays; Adventures of Ideas
126. George Santayana – The Life of Reason; Skepticism and Animal Faith; Persons and Places
127. Vladimir Lenin – The State and Revo ~ Mortimer J Adler,

220:A good performance, like a human life, is a temporal affair—a process in time. It is good as a whole through being good in its parts, and through their good order to one another. It cannot be called good as a whole until it is finished. During the process all we can say of it, if we speak precisely, is that it is becoming good. The same is true of a whole human life. Just as the whole performance never exists at any one time, but is a process of becoming, so a human life is also a performance in time and a process of becoming. And just as the goodness that attaches to the performance as a whole does not attach to any of its parts, so the goodness of a human life as a whole belongs to it alone, and not to any of its parts or phases. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

221:The vice of “verbalism” can be defined as the bad habit of using words without regard for the thoughts they should convey and without awareness of the experiences to which they should refer. It is playing with words. As the two tests we have suggested indicate, “verbalism” is the besetting sin of those who fail to read analytically. Such readers never get beyond the words. They possess what they read as a verbal memory that they can recite emptily. One of the charges made by certain modern educators against the liberal arts is that they tend to verbalism, but just the opposite seems to be the case. The failure in reading—the omnipresent verbalism—of those who have not been trained in the arts of grammar and logic shows how lack of such discipline results in slavery to words rather than mastery of them. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

222:(...) los medios de comunicación están concebidos de tal modo que pensar parezca innecesario (...) Al televidente, al radioyente o al lector de revistas se le ofrece todo un complejo de elementos —desde una retórica inteligente hasta datos y estadísticas cuidadosamente seleccionados con el fin de facilitarle «la formación de una opinión propia» con el mínimo de dificultades y esfuerzos, pero a veces esa presentación se efectúa con tal eficacia que el espectador, el oyente o el lector no se forma en absoluto una opinión propia, sino que, por el contrario, adquiere una opinión preconcebida que se inserta en su cerebro, casi como una cinta que se insertase en un aparato de música. A continuación aprieta un botón y «reproduce» esa opinión en el momento que le resulta conveniente. Y, por consiguiente, ha actuado de forma aceptable sin necesidad de pensar. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

223:To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth.
This distinction is familiar in terms of the differences between being able to remember something and being able to explain it. If you remember what an author says, you have learned something from reading him. If what he says is true, you have even learned something about the world. But whether it is a fact about the book or a fact about the world that you have learned, you have gained nothing but information if you have exercised only your memory. You have not been enlightened. Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

224:The characteristics of this kind of reading are perhaps summed up in the word “orthodox,” which is almost always applicable. The word comes from two Greek roots, meaning “right opinion.” These are books for which there is one and only one right reading; any other reading or interpretation is fraught with peril, from the loss of an “A” to the damnation of one’s soul. This characteristic carries with it an obligation. The faithful reader of a canonical book is obliged to make sense out of it and to find it true in one or another sense of “true.” If he cannot do this by himself, he is obliged to go to someone who can. This may be a priest or a rabbi, or it may be his superior in the party hierarchy, or it may be his professor. In any case, he is obliged to accept the resolution of his problem that is offered him. He reads essentially without freedom; but in return for this he gains a kind of satisfaction that is possibly never obtained when reading other books. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

225:Cuando compramos un libro establecemos una propiedad, como ocurre con la ropa o los muebles; pero el acto de comprar no representa sino el preludio de la posesión en el caso de un libro. Sólo se posee completamente un libro cuando pasa a formar parte de uno mismo, y la mejor forma de pasar a formar parte de él —lo que viene a ser lo mismo— es escribir en él.

¿Por qué es indispensable subrayar un libro para leerlo? En primer lugar, porque así nos mantenemos despiertos, totalmente despiertos y no sólo conscientes. En segundo lugar, leer, si lo hacemos activamente, equivale a pensar, y el pensamiento tiende a expresarse en palabras, escritas o habladas. La persona que asegura saber lo que piensa pero no puede expresarlo normalmente no sabe lo que piensa. En tercer lugar, anotar las propias reacciones ayuda a recordar las ideas del autor.

La lectura de un libro debería ser una conversación entre el lector y el escritor. Lo más probable es que éste sepa más sobre el tema que aquél; en otro caso, el lector no se molestaría en leer su obra, pero la comprensión supone una tarea doble: la persona que aprende tiene que plantearse preguntas y planteárselas al enseñante, e incluso tiene que estar dispuesta a discutir con éste una vez que ha entendido lo que dice. Literalmente, subrayar un libro equivale a la expresión de las diferencias o de la coincidencia del lector con el escritor, y supone el mayor honor que aquél le puede rendir a éste. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

226:(…) it may be seriously questioned whether the advent of modern communications media has much enhanced our understanding of the world in which we live.(…) Perhaps we know more about the world than we used to, and insofar as knowledge is prerequisite to understanding, that is all to the good. But knowledge is not as much a prerequisite to understanding as is commonly supposed. We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding. (…) One of the reasons for this situation is that the very media we have mentioned are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the
most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performer acceptably without having had to think. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

227:I- A Primeira Etapa da Leitura Analítica: Regras para Descobrir de que se Trata um Livro

1. Classifique o livro de acordo com o tipo e o assunto
2. Diga de que se trata todo o livro com a máxima concisão.
3. Enumere as partes principais por ordem e segundo a relação que guardam entre si, e delineie essas partes da mesma forma que você delineou o todo.
4. Defina o problema ou os problemas que o autor tentou resolver.

II- A Segunda Etapa da Leitura Analítica: Regras para interpretar o Conteúdo de um Livro

5. Assimile os termos do autor interpretando-lhe as palavras-chave.
6. Aprenda as principais porposições do autor examinando-lhe os períodos mais importantes.
7. Conheça os argumentos do autor, descobrindo-os nas sequências dos períodos ou construindo-os à base dessas sequências.
8. Determine quais os problemas que o autor resolveu e quais os que não resolveu; e dentre estes, indique quais os que o autor sabia que não conseguiria resolver.

III- A Terceira Etapa da Leitura Analítica: Regras para Criticar um Livro encarado sob o prisma da Comunicação de Conhecimentos

A- Preceitos Gerais da Etiqueta Intelectual

9. Não comece a crítica enquanto não completar o delineamentoe a interpretação do livro. (Não diga que concorda, discorda ou suspende o julgamento enquanto não puder dizer “Entendo”.)
10. Não faça da discordância disputa ou querela.
11. Demonstre que reconhece a diferença entre conhecimento e mera opinião pessoal apresentando boas razões para qualquer julgamento crítico que venha a fazer.

B- Critérios Especiais para Tópicos de Crítica

12. Mostre em que ponto o autor está desinformado.
13. Mostre em que ponto o autor está mal informado.
14. Mostre em que ponto o autor é ilógico
15. Mostre em que ponto a análise ou explanação do autor é incompleta. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

228:Reading is like skiing. When done well, when done by an expert, both reading and skiing are graceful, harmonious, activities. When done by a beginner, both are awkward, frustrating, and slow.
Learning to ski is one of the most humiliating experiences an adult can undergo (that is one reason to start young). After all, an adult has been walking for a long time; he knows where his feet are; he knows how to put one foot in front of the other in order to get somewhere. But as soon as he puts skis on his feet, it is as though he had to learn to walk all over again. He slips and slides, falls down, has trouble getting up, gets his skis crossed, tumbles again, and generally looks- and feels- like a fool.
Even the best instructor seems at first to be of no help. The ease with which the instructor performs actions that he says are simple but that the student secretly believes are impossible is almost insulting. How can you remember everything the instructors says you have to remember? Bend your knees. Look down the hill Keep your weight on the downhill ski. Keep your back straight, but nevertheless lean forward. The admonitions seem endless-how can you think about all that and still ski?
The point about skiing, of course, is that you should not be thinking about the separate acts that, together, make a smooth turn or series of linked turns- instead, you should merely be looking ahead of you down the hill, anticipating bumps and other skiers, enjoying the feel of the cold wind on your cheeks, smiling with pleasure at the fluid grace of your body as you speed down the mountain. In other words, you must learn to forget the separate acts in order to perform all of them, and indeed any of them, well. But in order to forget them as separate acts, you have to learn them first as separate acts. only then can you put them together to become a good skier. ~ Mortimer J Adler,

229:76. David Hume – Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
77. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile – or, On Education, The Social Contract
78. Laurence Sterne – Tristram Shandy; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
79. Adam Smith – The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations
80. Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure Reason; Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace
81. Edward Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography
82. James Boswell – Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D.
83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier – Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry)
84. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison – Federalist Papers
85. Jeremy Bentham – Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions
86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust; Poetry and Truth
87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier – Analytical Theory of Heat
88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History
89. William Wordsworth – Poems
90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Poems; Biographia Literaria
91. Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice; Emma
92. Carl von Clausewitz – On War
93. Stendhal – The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love
94. Lord Byron – Don Juan
95. Arthur Schopenhauer – Studies in Pessimism
96. Michael Faraday – Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity
97. Charles Lyell – Principles of Geology
98. Auguste Comte – The Positive Philosophy
99. Honoré de Balzac – Père Goriot; Eugenie Grandet
100. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative Men; Essays; Journal
101. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter
102. Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America
103. John Stuart Mill – A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography
104. Charles Darwin – The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Autobiography
105. Charles Dickens – Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Hard Times
106. Claude Bernard – Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
107. Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience; Walden
108. Karl Marx – Capital; Communist Manifesto
109. George Eliot – Adam Bede; Middlemarch
110. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick; Billy Budd
111. Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov
112. Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary; Three Stories
113. Henrik Ibsen – Plays
114. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace; Anna Karenina; What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales
115. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Mysterious Stranger
116. William James – The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism
117. Henry James – The American; The Ambassadors
118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals;The Will to Power
119. Jules Henri Poincaré – Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method
120. Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
121. George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces ~ Mortimer J Adler,

230:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus – Tragedies
4. Sophocles – Tragedies
5. Herodotus – Histories
6. Euripides – Tragedies
7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes – Comedies
10. Plato – Dialogues
11. Aristotle – Works
12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid – Elements
14. Archimedes – Works
15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections
16. Cicero – Works
17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil – Works
19. Horace – Works
20. Livy – History of Rome
21. Ovid – Works
22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy – Almagest
27. Lucian – Works
28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus – The Enneads
32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njál
36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More – Utopia
44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays
48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan
57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton – Works
59. Molière – Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics
63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve – The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets ~ Mortimer J Adler,

231:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus - Tragedies
4. Sophocles - Tragedies
5. Herodotus - Histories
6. Euripides - Tragedies
7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes - Comedies
10. Plato - Dialogues
11. Aristotle - Works
12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid - Elements
14.Archimedes - Works
15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections
16. Cicero - Works
17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil - Works
19. Horace - Works
20. Livy - History of Rome
21. Ovid - Works
22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy - Almagest
27. Lucian - Works
28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus - The Enneads
32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More - Utopia
44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays
48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton - Works
59. Molière - Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve - The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
~ Mortimer J Adler,

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