In idling, the motor's running, but you're letting your mind take in anything. Things pop into it. Those are the gifts of subterranean conscious.
Mortimer AdlerRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
To improve as a reader, you must challenge yourself with difficult material.
Mortimer Adler emphasizes that personal growth, particularly in reading, requires stepping out of one's comfort zone. Engaging with complex or challenging texts forces you to expand your understanding and skills, ultimately enhancing your reading abilities and promoting deeper learning.
Themes
ReadingEducationGrowthChallengeLearning
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech at a reading workshop focusing on improving literacy skills.
More from Mortimer Adler
All quotes →The only standard we have for judging all of our social, economic, and political institutions and arrangements as just or unjust, as good or bad, as better or worse, derives from our conception of the good life for man on earth, and from our conviction that, given certain external conditions, it is possible for men to make good lives for themselves by their own efforts.
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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.
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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.
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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 AdlerRead
When we ask for love, we don't ask others to be fair to us-but rather to care for us, to be considerate of us. There is a world of difference here between demanding justice... and begging or pleading for love.
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There is nothing like books - of all things sold incomparably the cheapest, of all pleasure the least palling, they take up little room, keep quiet when they are not wanted, and, when taken up, bring us face to face with the choicest men who ever lived, at their choicest moments.
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From now on I hope always to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out.
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