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Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren Biography

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“To be equally serious in receiving such communication, one must be not only a responsive but also a responsible listener. You are responsive to the extent that you follow what has been said and note the intention that prompts it. But you also have the responsibility of taking a position. When you take it, it is yours, not the author's. To regard anyone except yourself as responsible for your judgment is to be a slave, not a free man. It is from this fact that the liberal arts acquire their name. (P. 140)”

Liberal ArtsResponsibility For Your ActionsCriticizing A Book Fairly
Book:How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
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“The trouble is that many people regard disagreement as unrelated to either teaching or being taught. They think that everything is just a matter of opinion. I have mine, and you have yours; and our right to our opinions is as inviolable as our right to private property. On such a view, communication cannot be profitable if the profit to be gained is an increase in knowledge. Conversation is hardly better than a ping-pong game of opposed opinions, a game in which no one keeps score, no one wins, and everyone is satisfied because he does not lose—that is, he ends up holding the same opinions he started with. (P. 147)”

Opinions Vs FactsCriticizing A Book FairlyResolution Of DisagreementsReading For Undertanding
Book:How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
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“The point we are trying to make is that disagreement is futile agitation unless it is undertaken with the hope that it may lead to the resolution of an issue. These two facts, that people do disagree and can agree, arise from the complexity of human nature. Men are rational animals. Their rationality is the source of their power to agree. Their animality, and the imperfections of their reason that it entails, is the cause of most of the disagreements that occur. Men are creatures of passion and prejudice. (P. 146)”

PrejudiceRationalityCriticizing A Book FairlyResolution Of DisagreementsRational Animals
Book:How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
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