Mortimer Adler Quotes

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

Philosophy is everybody's business.

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

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

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

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

We love even when our love is not requited.

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

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.

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

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

Being influential is not the mark of a great book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Love wishes to perpetuate itself. Love wishes for immortality.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Love without conversation is impossible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.