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 Adler

Categorized in : School Judging Errors

All genuine learning is active, not passive. It involves the use of the mind, not just the memory. It is a process of discovery, in which the student is the main agent, not the teacher.

Mortimer Adler

discovery teacher memories

More consequences for thought and action follow the affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other basic question.

Mortimer Adler

affirmation denial action

Not to engage in this pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men.

Mortimer Adler

moving-on live-life motivational

I suspect that most of the individuals who have religious faith are content with blind faith. They feel no obligation to understand what they believe. They may even wish not to have their beliefs disturbed by thought.

Mortimer Adler

intellectual religious believe

To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.

Mortimer Adler

disagree agree understanding

True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.

Mortimer Adler

discipline freedom mind

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 Adler

education motivational book

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.

Mortimer Adler

information book world

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 Adler

drug mind giving

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 Adler

teacher mean book

The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.

Mortimer Adler

teaching positive inspirational

Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely.

Mortimer Adler

feeling-alone being-alone lonely

The ultimate end of education is happiness or a good human life, a life enriched by the possession of every kind of good, by the enjoyment of every type of satisfaction.

Mortimer Adler

kind satisfaction ends

You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think.

Mortimer Adler

time motivational inspirational

Education is the sum total of one's experience, and the purpose of higher education is to widen our experiences beyond the circumscribed existence or our own daily lives.

Mortimer Adler

daily-life purpose education

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 Adler

mean children thinking

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.

Mortimer Adler

wisdom life book

The truly great books are the few books that are over everybody's head all of the time.

Mortimer Adler

great-book book

The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.

Mortimer Adler

reader book way

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 Adler

lectures mind teacher