Quotes from Mortimer Adler

The first is: if you can, read more than one history of an event or period that interests you. The second is: read a history not only to learn what really happened at a particular time and place in the past, but also to learn the way men act in all times and places, especially now.

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 3. SET FORTH THE MAJOR PARTS OF THE BOOK, AND SHOW HOW THESE ARE ORGANIZED INTO A WHOLE, BY BEING ORDERED TO ONE ANOTHER AND TO THE UNITY OF THE WHOLE.

Good controversy should not be a quarrel about assumptions

Some writers have excellent "control"; they know exactly what they want to convey, and they convey it precisely and accurately

Every field of knowledge has its own technical vocabulary.

you have to discover the meaning of a word you do not understand by using the meanings of all the other words in the context that you do understand.

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

we want to know not merely what his propositions are, but also why he thinks we should be persuaded to accept them.

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.

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.

We must act in such a way, when reading a story, that we let it act on us. We must allow it to move us, we must let it do whatever work it wants to do on us. We must somehow make ourselves open to it.