Mortimer Adler Quotes & Sayings

Love without conversation is impossible. — Mortimer Adler

One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian. — Mortimer Adler

If one wants another only for some self-satisfaction, usually in the form of sensual pleasure, that wrong desire takes the form of lust rather than love. — Mortimer Adler

Emancipation of human labor from economic servitude and exploitation, i.e., from organizations of production in which the conditions of work are determined by a master class who own the means of production, and in which the fruits of work are alienated from workers to the benefit of masters. — Mortimer Adler

The materialist assumption that spiritual substances do not exist is as much an act of faith as the religious belief in the reality of angels. — Mortimer Adler

Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error. — Mortimer Adler

Ask others about themselves, at the same time, be on guard not to talk too much about yourself. — Mortimer Adler

Sin is not only manifested in certain acts that are forbidden by divine command. Sin also appears in attitudes and dispositions and feelings. Lust and hate are sins as well as adultery and murder. And, in the traditional Christian view, despair and chronic boredom - unaccompanied by any vicious act - are serious sins. They are expressions of man's separation from God, as the ultimate good, meaning, and end of human existence. — Mortimer Adler

When we ask for love, we don't ask others to be fair to us-but rather to care for us, to be considerate of us. There is a world of difference here between demanding justice ... and begging or pleading for love. — Mortimer Adler

Being influential is not the mark of a great book. — Mortimer Adler

We acknowledge but one motive - to follow the truth as we know it, whithersoever it may lead us; but in our heart of hearts we are well assured that the truth which has made us free, will in the end make us glad also. — Mortimer Adler

More consequences for thought and action follow the affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other basic question. — Mortimer Adler

Let me roughly divide books into those which compete with the movies and those with which the movies cannot compete. They are the books that can elevate or instruct. If they are fine works of fiction, they can deepen your appreciation of human life. If they are serious works of nonfiction, they can inform or enlighten you. — Mortimer Adler

In English we must use adjectives to distinguish the different kinds of love for which the ancients had distinct names. — Mortimer Adler

One of the aims of sexual union is procreation - the creation by reproduction of an image of itself, of the union. — Mortimer Adler

Love can be unselfish, in the sense of being benevolent and generous, without being selfless. — Mortimer Adler

Teachers may think they are stuffing minds, but all they are ever affecting is the memory. Nothing can ever be forced into anyone's mind except by brainwashing, which is the very opposite of genuine teaching. — Mortimer Adler

The love which moves the world, according to common Christian belief, is God's love and the love of God. — Mortimer Adler

You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think. — Mortimer Adler

We are selfish when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good for ourselves. We are altruistic when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good of others. — Mortimer Adler

Ultimately, we wish the joy of perfect union with the person we love. — Mortimer Adler

Think how different human societies would be if they were based on love rather than justice. But no such societies have ever existed on earth. — Mortimer Adler

There is a strange fact about the human mind, a fact that differentiates the mind sharply from the body. The body is limited in ways that the mind is not. One sign of this is that the body does not continue indefinitely to grow in strength and develop in skill and grace. By the time most people are thirty years old, their bodies are as good as they will ever be; in fact, many persons' bodies have begun to deteriorate by that time. But there is no limit to the amount of growth and development that the mind can sustain. The mind does not stop growing at any particular age. — Mortimer Adler

The teacher's role in discussion is to keep it going along fruitful lines - be moderating, guiding, correcting and arguing like one more students. — Mortimer Adler

I find the selectivity of erotic love - the choice of this man or this woman - much more intelligible if liking the person is the origin of sexual interest, rather than the other way. — Mortimer Adler

Freud's view is that all love is sexual in its origin or its basis. Even those loves which do not appear to be sexual or erotic have a sexual root or core. They are all sublimations of the sexual instinct. — Mortimer Adler

The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea. — Mortimer Adler

It's not how many books you get through, it's how many books get through you. — Mortimer Adler

Erotic or sexual love can truly be love if it is not selfishly sexual or lustful. — Mortimer Adler

Political democracy cannot flourish under all economic conditions. Democracy requires an economic system which supports the political ideals of liberty and equality for all. Men cannot exercise freedom in the political sphere when they are deprived of it in the economic sphere. — Mortimer Adler

The only standard we have for judging all of our social, economic, and political institutions and arrangements as just or unjust, as good or bad, as better or worse, derives from our conception of the good life for man on earth, and from our conviction that, given certain external conditions, it is possible for men to make good lives for themselves by their own efforts. — Mortimer Adler

Love consists in giving without getting in return; in giving what is not owed, what is not due the other. That's why true love is never based, as associations for utility or pleasure are, on a fair exchange. — Mortimer Adler

An educated person is one who, through the travail of his own life, has assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture. — Mortimer Adler

Work that is pure toil, done solely for the sake of the money it earns, is also sheer drudgery because it is stultifying rather than self improving. — Mortimer Adler

There is only one situation I can think of in which men and women make an effort to read better than they usually do. It is when they are in love and reading a love letter. — Mortimer Adler

I suspect that most of the individuals who have religious faith are content with blind faith. They feel no obligation to understand what they believe. They may even wish not to have their beliefs disturbed by thought. But if God in whom they believe created them with intellectual and rational powers, that imposes upon them the duty to try to understand the creed of their religion. Not to do so is to verge on superstition. — Mortimer Adler

The philosopher ought never to try to avoid the duty of making up his mind. — Mortimer Adler

Education is the sum total of one's experience, and the purpose of higher education is to widen our experiences beyond the circumscribed existence or our own daily lives. — Mortimer Adler

All genuine learning is active, not passive. It involves the use of the mind, not just the memory. It is a process of discovery, in which the student is the main agent, not the teacher. — Mortimer Adler

One reader is better than another in proportion as he is able of a greater range of activity in reading and exerts more effort. — Mortimer Adler

Men value things in three ways: as useful, as pleasant or sources of pleasure, and as excellent, or as intrinsically admirable or honorable. — Mortimer Adler

Friendship is a very taxing and arduous form of leisure activity. — Mortimer Adler

In idling, the motor's running, but you're letting your mind take in anything. Things pop into it. Those are the gifts of subterranean conscious. — Mortimer Adler

My chief reason for choosing Christianity was because the mysteries were incomprehensible. What's the point of revelation if we could figure it out ourselves? If it were wholly comprehensible, then it would just be another philosophy. — Mortimer Adler

Aristotle uses a mother's love for her child as the prime example of love or friendship. — Mortimer Adler

The ultimate end of education is happiness or a good human life, a life enriched by the possession of every kind of good, by the enjoyment of every type of satisfaction. — Mortimer Adler

First, an angel is spiritually present at whatever place in physical space happens to be occupied by the body on which it acts. It can be present at that place without leaving Heaven which is its spiritual residence ... — Mortimer Adler

Philosophy is everybody's business. — Mortimer Adler

Conjugal love, or the friendship of spouses, can persist even after sexual desires have weakened, withered, and disappeared. — Mortimer Adler

It is love rather than sexual lust or unbridled sexuality if, in addition to the need or want involved, there is also some impulse to give pleasure to the persons thus loved and not merely to use them for our own selfish pleasure. — Mortimer Adler

Angels are able to know and understand better than the human intellect can, precisely because such knowledge and understanding comes to them by way of ideas infused in them by God ... — Mortimer Adler

Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men. — Mortimer Adler

We love even when our love is not requited. — Mortimer Adler

Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men. — Mortimer Adler

Work is toil: what one does only to earn a living. If it gives pleasure, it is leisure. — Mortimer Adler

I wonder if most people ever ask themselves why love is connected with reproduction. And if they do ask themselves about this, I wonder what answer they give. — Mortimer Adler

In Aristotelian terms, the good leader must have ethos, pathos and logos. The ethos is his moral character, the source of his ability to persuade. The pathos is his ability to touch feelings to move people emotionally. The logos is his ability to give solid reasons for an action, to move people intellectually. — Mortimer Adler

Idling is important. Most people don't know how. They're afraid of it. This explains why they turn on the television set or pick up the newspaper. They think they have to be doing something. — Mortimer Adler

Love wishes to perpetuate itself. Love wishes for immortality. — Mortimer Adler

Leisure is not synonymous with time. Nor is it a noun. Leisure is a verb. I leisure. You leisure. — Mortimer Adler

Theories of love are found in the works of scientists, philosophers, and theologians. — Mortimer Adler

Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely. — Mortimer Adler

Angels are not merely forms of extraterrestrial intelligence.
They are forms of extra-cosmic intelligence. — Mortimer Adler