Melissa Baker

“True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“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 J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“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 J. Adler, How to Read a Book