Top 106 Quotes & Sayings by Mortimer Adler

Love without conversation is impossible.

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.

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

The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.

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.

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

Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

We love even when our love is not requited.

Love wishes to perpetuate itself. Love wishes for immortality.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.

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

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.

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

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

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

Being influential is not the mark of a great book.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree?

To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.

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

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.

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.

Not to engage in this pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men.

Philosophy is everybody's business.

A good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser.

Sometimes it feels like I'm thinking against the wind.

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

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.

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.

True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.

The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.

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

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.

Television, radio, and all the sources of amusement and information that surround us in our daily lives are also artificial props. They can give us the impression that our minds are active, because we are required to react to stimuli from the outside. But the power of those external stimuli to keep us going is limited. They are like drugs. We grow used to them, and we continuously need more and more of them. Eventually, they have little or no effect. Then, if we lack resources within ourselves, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. And we we cease to grow, we begin to die.