“Too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding.”
Source: How to Read a Book (1940, 1972), p. 4
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Mortimer J. Adler 31
American philosopher and educator 1902–2001Related quotes

The Idiot (1868–9)
Context: Nor is there any embarrassment in the fact that we're ridiculous, isn't it true? For it's actually so, we are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, you, and I, and they! Now, you're not offended when I tell you to your face that you're ridiculous? And if so, aren't you material? You know, in my opinion it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can the sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can't understand everything at once, we cant start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. This I tell you, you, who have already been able to understand... and not understand … so much. I'm not afraid for you now;

“You read too much and understand too little.”
Moiraine Damodred
(15 September 1992)
Source: The Shadow Rising

“They've tried to grasp with too much social fact
Too large a situation.”
The Lesson for Today (1942)
Context: They've tried to grasp with too much social fact
Too large a situation. You and I
Would be afraid if we should comprehend
And get outside of too much bad statistics,
Our muscles never could again contract:
We never could recover human shape,
But must live lives out mentally agape
Or die of philosophical distention.
That's how we feel — and we're no special mystics.

G 32
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

“A moral point of view too often serves as a substitute for understanding in technological matters.”
Source: 1960s, Understanding Media (1964), p. 245
“When you say "I" and "my" too much, you lose the capacity to understand the "we" and "our."”
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 97