AJ Mortimer, How to Speak, How to Listen (Touchstone. 1983), p61-62
"Always risk talking over their heads!.... It will not hurt if some of the things you say may be beyond their reach. It is much better for them to have the sense that they have succeeded in getting some enlightenment by their effort to reach up (even if they also have the sense that somethings to be understood have escaped them) than it is for them to sit feeling insulted by the patronising manner in which you have talked down to them.
The truly great books, I have repeatedly said, are the few books that are over everybody's head all of the time. That is why they are endlessly rereadable as instruments from which you can go on learning more and more on each rereading. What you come to understand each time is a step upward in the development of your mind; so also is your realisation of what remains to be understood by further effort on your part.
...What is true of books to be read is true of lectures to be listened to. The only lectures that are intellectually profitable for anyone to listen to are those that increase one's knowledge and understanding."
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