Top 100 Mortimer Adler Quotes
#1. Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men.
Mortimer Adler
#2. Good books are over your head; they would not be good for you if they were not.
Mortimer J. Adler
#3. Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author.
Mortimer J. Adler
#4. 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
#5. The failure in reading -the omnipresent verbalism- of those who have not been trained in the arts of grammar and logic shows how lack of such discipline results in slavery to words rather than mastery of them.
Mortimer J. Adler
#6. You cannot begin to deal with terms, propositions, and arguments - the elements of thought - until you can penetrate beneath the surface of language.
Mortimer J. Adler
#7. To this day, most institutions of higher learning either do not know how to instruct students in reading beyond the elementary level, or lack the facilities and personnel to do so.
Mortimer J. Adler
#8. Reading a book is a kind of conversation. You may think it is not conversation at all, because the author does all the talking and you have nothing to say. If you think that, you do not realize your full obligation as a reader - and you are not grasping your opportunities.
Mortimer J. Adler
#9. 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
#10. More consequences for thought and action follow the affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other basic question.
Mortimer Adler
#11. It is traditional in America to criticize the schools; for more than a century, parents, self-styled experts, and educators themselves have attacked and indicted the educational system.
Mortimer J. Adler
#12. Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.
Mortimer J. Adler
#13. Great speed in reading is a dubious achievement; it is of value only if what you have to read is not worth reading.
Mortimer J. Adler
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. Love can be unselfish, in the sense of being benevolent and generous, without being selfless.
Mortimer Adler
#17. 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
#18. The first dictionaries were glossaries of Homeric words, intended to help Romans read the Iliad and Odyssey as well as other Greek literature employing the 'archaic' Homeric vocabulary.
Mortimer J. Adler
#19. Being influential is not the mark of a great book.
Mortimer Adler
#20. But it may be seriously questioned whether the advent of modern communications media has much enhanced our understanding of the world
Mortimer J. Adler
#21. Erotic or sexual love can truly be love if it is not selfishly sexual or lustful.
Mortimer Adler
#23. Conjugal love, or the friendship of spouses, can persist even after sexual desires have weakened, withered, and disappeared.
Mortimer Adler
#24. A practical problem can only be solved by action itself. When your practical problem is how to earn a living, a book on how to make friends and influence people cannot solve it, though it may suggest things to do. Nothing short of the doing solves the problem. It is solved only by earning a living.
Mortimer J. Adler
#25. As Thomas Hobbes said, If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are.
Mortimer J. Adler
#26. Most of us are addicted to non-active reading. The outstanding fault of the non-active or undemanding reader is his inattention to words, and his consequent failure to come to terms with the author.
Mortimer J. Adler
#27. Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error.
Mortimer Adler
#28. 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
#30. The first stage of elementary reading - reading readiness - corresponds to pre-school and kindergarten experiences.
Mortimer J. Adler
#31. Getting more information is learning, and so is coming to understand what you did not understand before. But there is an important difference between these two kinds of learning.
Mortimer J. Adler
#32. Being relevant simply consists in paying close attention to the point that is being talked about and saying nothing that is not significantly related to it.
Mortimer J. Adler
#33. All books will become light in proportion as you find light in them.
Mortimer J. Adler
#34. The possession of the truth is the highest goal of the human mind.
Mortimer J. Adler
#35. The student can read as fast as his mind will let him, not as slow as his eyes make him.
Mortimer J. Adler
#36. In judging a practical book, everything turns on the ends or goals.
Mortimer J. Adler
#37. In English we must use adjectives to distinguish the different kinds of love for which the ancients had distinct names.
Mortimer Adler
#38. Leisure is not synonymous with time. Nor is it a noun. Leisure is a verb. I leisure. You leisure.
Mortimer Adler
#39. Men are creatures of passion and prejudice. The language they must use to communicate is an imperfect medium, clouded by emotion and colored by interest, as well as inadequately transparent for thought.
Mortimer J. Adler
#40. 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
#41. It's not how many books you get through, it's how many books get through you.
Mortimer Adler
#42. Many readers fear that it would be disloyal to their commitment to stand apart and impersonally question what they are reading. Yet this is necessary whenever you read analytically.
Mortimer J. Adler
#43. 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?
Mortimer J. Adler
#44. 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
#45. To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.
Mortimer J. Adler
#46. 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
#47. In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
Mortimer J. Adler
#48. The ability to retain a child's view of the world with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare - and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking.
Mortimer J. Adler
#49. The art of reading, in short, includes all of the same skills that are involved in the art of unaided discovery: keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and, of course, an intellect trained in analysis and reflection.
Mortimer J. Adler
#50. Finally, do not try to understand every word or page of a difficult book the first time through. This is the most important rule of all; it is the essence of inspectional reading.
Mortimer J. Adler
#51. 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
#53. You must be able to say "I understand," before you can say "I agree," or "I disagree," or "I suspend judgment.
Mortimer J. Adler
#54. 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
#55. Now there is no other way of forming a habit of operation than by operating.
Mortimer J. Adler
#56. Angels are not merely forms of extraterrestrial intelligence.
They are forms of extra-cosmic intelligence.
Mortimer Adler
#57. There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well. The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all sophomores.
Mortimer J. Adler
#58. One of the most familiar tricks of the orator or propagandist is to leave certain things unsaid, things that are highly relevant to the argument, but that might be challenged if they were made explicit. While
Mortimer J. Adler
#59. 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
#60. Work is toil: what one does only to earn a living. If it gives pleasure, it is leisure.
Mortimer Adler
#61. There is no inactive learning, just as there is no inactive reading.
Mortimer J. Adler
#62. Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts.
Mortimer J. Adler
#65. Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.
Mortimer Adler
#67. If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you don't already possess
Mortimer J. Adler
#68. Love wishes to perpetuate itself. Love wishes for immortality.
Mortimer Adler
#69. From your point of view as a reader, therefore, the most important words are those that give you trouble.
Mortimer J. Adler
#70. The human mind is as naturally sensitive to arguments as the eye is to colors. (There may be some people who are argument-blind!) But the eye will not see if it is not kept open, and the mind will not follow an argument if it is not awake.
Mortimer J. Adler
#71. Scientific objectivity is not the absence of initial bias. It is attained by frank confession of it.
Mortimer J. Adler
#72. 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
#73. Remember Bacon's recommendation to the reader: Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
Mortimer J. Adler
#74. If your friend wishes to read your 'Plutarch's Lives,' 'Shakespeare,' or 'The Federalist Papers,' tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat - but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.
Mortimer J. Adler
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.
Mortimer J. Adler
#79. The beauty of any work of art is related to the pleasure it gives us when we know it well.
Mortimer J. Adler
#80. The philosopher ought never to try to avoid the duty of making up his mind.
Mortimer Adler
#81. Understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher.
Mortimer J. Adler
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. Think of yourself as a detective looking for clues to a book's general theme or idea, alert for anything that will make it clearer.
Mortimer J. Adler
#85. Read the book through, undeterred and undismayed by the paragraphs, footnotes, comments, and references that escape you. If you let yourself get stalled, if you allow yourself to be tripped up by any one of these stumbling blocks, you are lost.
Mortimer J. Adler
#86. Ask others about themselves, at the same time, be on guard not to talk too much about yourself.
Mortimer Adler
#87. There is no more irritating fellow than the one who tries to settle an argument about communism, or justice, or freedom, by quoting from the dictionary. Lexicographers may be respected as authorities on word usage, but they are not the ultimate founts of wisdom.
Mortimer J. Adler
#88. 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
#89. The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea.
Mortimer Adler
#90. True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.
Mortimer J. Adler
#92. 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.
Mortimer J. Adler
#93. Even when you have been somewhat enlightened by what you have read, you are called upon to continue the serach for significance.
Mortimer J. Adler
#94. As arts, grammar and logic are concerned with language in relation to thought and thought in relation to language. That is why skill in both reading and writing is gained through these arts.
Mortimer J. Adler
#96. Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely.
Mortimer Adler
#99. TURN THE PAGES, DIPPING IN HERE AND THERE, READING A PARAGRAPH OR TWO, SOMETIMES SEVERAL PAGES IN SEQUENCE, NEVER MORE THAN THAT.
Mortimer J. Adler
#100. 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
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