Mortimer Adler Quotes
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Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.
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If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means. If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking an analysis yourself.
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True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.
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Ask others about themselves, at the same time, be on guard not to talk too much about yourself.
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We wish the joy of love, the joy of companionship, of being in the company of, in the presence of the person we love, of living a common life with that person, perhaps ultimately the joy of perfect union.
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All genuine learning is active, not passive.
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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.
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More consequences for thought and action follow the affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other basic question.
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The truly great books are the few books that are over everybody's head all of the time.
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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.
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Aristotle uses a mother's love for her child as the prime example of love or friendship.
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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.
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The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions - simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions - and maturely wise in our replies.
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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.
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The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea.
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The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.
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Love can be unselfish, in the sense of being benevolent and generous, without being selfless.
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There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception.
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The tragedy of being both rational and animal seems to consist in having to choose between duty and desire rather than in making any particular choice
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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.
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Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business.
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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.
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Books are absent teachers.
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One of the aims of sexual union is procreation - the creation by reproduction of an image of itself, of the union.
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... The person who, at any stage of a conversation, disagrees, should at least hope to reach agreement in the end. He should be as much prepared to have his own mind changed as seek to change the mind of another ... No one who looks upon disagreement as an occasion for teaching another should forget that it is also an occasion for being taught.
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There is no more irritating fellow than the man who tries to settle an argument about communism, or justice, or liberty, by quoting from Webster.
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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.
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All books will become light in proportion as you find light in them.
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Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error.
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Love wishes to perpetuate itself. Love wishes for immortality.
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