Quotes from Alan Jacobs

Read what gives you delight—at least most of the time—and do so without shame. And even if you are that rare sort of person who is delighted chiefl y by what some people call Great Books, don't make them your steady intellectual diet, any more than you would eat at the most elegant of restaurants every day. It would be too much. Great books are great in part because of what they ask of their readers: they are not readily encountered, easily assessed.

Those who will never be fooled can never be delighted, because without self-forgetfulness there can be no delight, and this is a great and grievous loss.

I would not be practicing love toward God OR my neighbour if I were to smile benignly on an unjust social order. It is not charitable to refrain from moral judgment: when Jesus says 'Judge not, lest ye be judged," he is forbidding condemnation, not discernment. There are times indeed when Christian charity demands that one speak forcibly.

all of us at various times in our lives believe true things for poor reasons, and false things for good reasons, and that whatever we think we know, whether we're right or wrong, arises from our interactions with other human beings. Thinking independently, solitarily, "for ourselves," is not an option.

Great books are great in part because of what they ask of their readers: they are not readily encountered, easily assessed.

The book that simply demands to be read, for no good reason, is asking us to change our lives by putting aside what we usually think of as good reasons. It's asking us to stop calculating. It's asking us to do something for the plain old delight and interest of it, not because we can justify its place on the mental spreadsheet or accounting ledger (like the one Benjamin Franklin kept) by which we tote up the value of our actions.

When we talk today about receptiveness to stories, we tend to contrast that attitude to one governed by reason - we talk about freeing ourselves from the shackles of the rational mind and that sort of thing - but no belief was more central to Lewis's mind than the belief that it is eminently, fully rational to be responsive to the enchanting power of stories.

when we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts."*5

So the books are waiting. Of this you may be confident: they'll be ready when the whim strikes you.

T. S. Eliot wrote almost a century ago about a phenomenon that he believed to be the product of the nineteenth century: "When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when everyone knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not.

By reading, a man already having some wisdom can gain far more; but it is equally true that reading can make a man already inclined toward foolishness far, far more foolish.

You can reread not from love or hatred but from a sense, often inchoate, that there's more to this book than you have ben yet able to receive.

there are ways to be dishonest that fall short of actual lying.

Slow down. Make a point of revisiting passages that seem especially rich, or especially confusing, or for that matter especially offensive.

There's a famous and often-told story about the great economist John Maynard Keynes: once, when accused of having flip-flopped on some policy issue, Keynes acerbically replied, "When the facts change, sir, I change my mind. What do you do?

If everything is a matter of opinion, and if everybody is entitled to his own opinion, force becomes the only way of settling differences of opinion.

It's what you're reading that matters, and how you're reading it, not the speed with which you're getting through it. Reading is supposed to be about the encounter with other minds, not an opportunity to return to the endlessly appealing subject of Me.

the blogosphere is the friend of information but the enemy of thought.

Our goal as adults is not to love all books alike, or as few as possible, but rather to love as widely and as well as our limited selves will allow.

it was disbelief in the universality of moral truth, and the failure to see that human beings are by nature capable of gaining access to moral truth, that created the intellectual perversions of pragmatism and positivism alike.

About some things—about many things!—we believe that people should have not open minds but settled convictions. We cannot make progress intellectually or socially until some issues are no longer up for grabs.

modern democracy has been derived from, and can only be justified by, the theological dogmas of Hebraic-Christianity according to which all men are created by God and equal before Him.

Readers who wish to follow Whim rather than whim--readers who have learned enough about what he or she really thrives on to seek more of it--the first lesson must be in humility. . . . Don't waste time and mental energy in comparing yourself to others whether to your shame or gratification, since we are all wayfarers.

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value"; but it was tragically wrong "in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace."16