Mortimer J. Adler Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. 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? How to Read a Book: The Classic Bestselling Guide to Reading Books and Accessing Information

2. 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. How to Read a Book: The Classic Bestselling Guide to Reading Books and Accessing Information

3. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature. How to Read a Book: The Classic Bestselling Guide to Reading Books and Accessing Information

4. ....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. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

5. 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. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

6. 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. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

7. 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.. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

8. 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. How to Read a Book: The Classic Bestselling Guide to Reading Books and Accessing Information