Mortimer Adler Quotes

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.

The greatest educational dogma is also its greatest fallacy: the belief that what must be learned can necessarily be taught.

Teaching is more difficult than learning because what teaching calls for is this: to let learn. The real teacher, in fact, lets nothing else be learned than learning. His conduct, therefore, often produces the impression that we properly learn nothing from him, if by "learning" we now suddenly understand merely the procurement of useful information.

Teaching is only demonstrating that it is possible. Learning is making it possible for yourself.

To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.

All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

Teaching is an instinctual art, mindful of potential, craving of realizations, a pausing, seamless process, where one rehearses constantly while acting, sits as a spectator at a play one directs, engages every part in order to keep the choices open and the shape alive for the student, so that the student may enter in, and begin to do what the teacher has done: make choices.

In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.

Education is the methodical creation of the habit of thinking.

The teacher that I was for decades, and that I still am in a certain way, wondered what was meant by the word education. I was truly dumbfounded at the very thought of dealing with such an essential and extensive subject.

Memory and creativity are essential to education, but if you teach memory incorrectly, it is a total waste of time, and it will inhibit learning.

Education is all a matter of building bridges.

In teaching, regard must be had to the faculties possessed by the pupil. In childhood, memory; in youth, the understanding; in mature life, the reason is the predominating faculty.

The mere imparting of information is not education.

Teaching brings out innate powers, and proper training braces the intellect.

We can teach only if we are willing to learn.

Learning is more than absorbing facts, it is acquiring understanding.

School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. And institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

As all born teachers, he was primarily a student.

To teach is part of the very fabric of learning.

All teaching and all intellectual learning come about from already existing knowledge.

Teaching may be compared to selling commodities. No one can sell unless somebody buys.

The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.