Mortimer Adler Quotes on Knowledge
Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book (1940), the Great Books of the Western World project (1952, with Robert Hutchins), and the Syntopicon two-volume index of the great ideas (1952) gave mid-twentieth-century American philosophical pedagogy its most influential statement of the great-books approach to philosophical knowledge. The central commitment is that the principal philosophical questions are settled enough to admit of organized comparative treatment across the entire Western tradition — the 102 great ideas of the Syntopicon — and that ordinary educated readers can acquire substantive philosophical knowledge through the patient close reading of the major texts under the guidance of the Adlerian Aristotelian-Thomistic framework. The framework, developed across Adler’s long Encyclopaedia Britannica and Aspen Institute career, shaped twentieth-century American liberal education and the broader public-philosophy tradition through the Paideia Proposal and the popular Adler radio and television lectures.
Quotes
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Attributed to Mortimer Adler:
“Reading well is the foundation of thinking well.”
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Attributed to Mortimer Adler:
“Liberal education is for free people, not for free time.”
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Attributed to Mortimer Adler:
“Truth, goodness, and beauty are objective and discoverable.”
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Attributed to Mortimer Adler:
“Philosophy is everybody's business.”
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Attributed to Mortimer Adler:
“Aristotle, rightly read, is still the philosopher of common sense.”
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“The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.”
As quoted in The Leisure alternatives catalog: food for mind & body (1979) edited by Joseph Allen ,p. 134 -
“You can't be a philosopher and an activist . If you do, you get all mixed up.”
As quoted in " Philosopher, reformer Mortimer Adler, father of 'Great Books' program, dies at 98" by F.N. D'Alession, lubbockonline.com, June 29, 2001) -
“Unlike many of my contemporaries, I never write books for my fellow professors to read. I have no interest in the academic audience at all. I'm interested in Joe Doakes. A general audience can read any book I write – and they do.”
As quoted in "Philosopher, reformer Mortimer Adler, father of 'Great Books' program, dies at 98" by F.N. D'Alession, lubbockonline.com (29 June 2001) -
“How to Mark a Book," The Saturday Review of Literature (6 July 1941); also in Modern English Readings (1946), pp. 298-301”
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. -
“The telephone book is full of facts , but it doesn't contain a single idea .”
As quoted in Book of Humorous Quotations 9 (1998), by Connie Robertson, p. 2 -
“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.”
How to Read a Book(1940, 1972) | p. 4 -
“Every seminar should involve at its conclusion the assignment of a short composition in which students would attempt to state how their understanding of the book discussed in the seminar was increased by their participation in the discussion.”
Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind(1990) | p. 316