Mortimer Adler Quotes

60 Sourced Quotes

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
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
Always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.

Mortimer Adler
If you are reading in order to become a better reader, you cannot read just any book or article. You will not improve as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn.

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

Mortimer Adler
A report of the Carnegie Foundation recommended the abolition of the undergraduate bachelor of science degree in education leading to the state certification of teachers. Schools of education should become research institutions at the graduate level of the university and not places for the training of schoolteachers. Those planning to enter the profession of teaching should have four years of general, liberal education at the college level, and then three years of practice teaching under supervision... the best teacher is one who learns in the process of teaching.

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

Mortimer Adler
The truly great books are the few books that are over everybody's head all of the time.

Mortimer Adler
... an adequate reform of public education in our school system cannot be accomplished by anything like a quick fix. We suspect that anyone who thinks otherwise cannot fully understand the shape of an adequate reform or all the obstacles to be overcome in achieving it.

Mortimer Adler
The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.

Mortimer Adler
You can't be a philosopher and an activist. If you do, you get all mixed up.

Mortimer Adler
Fame belongs to the great, the outstanding, the exceptional, without regard to virtue or vice. Infamy is fame no less than good repute. The great scoundrel can be as famous as the great hero; there can be famous villains as well as famous saints.

Mortimer Adler
The books to be read should not be limited to those written in English.... Instead it should be devoted to the great works of history, biography, philosophy, theology, natural science, social science, and mathematics, as well as the... tradition of Western literature — in English translation... Its aim should not be a survey of Western civilization, but an effort to understand the basic ideas and issues in Western thought.

Mortimer Adler
Unlike many of my contemporaries, I never write books for my fellow professors to read. I have no interest in the academic audience at all. I'm interested in Joe Doakes. A general audience can read any book I write – and they do.

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
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
Too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding.

Mortimer Adler
A lecture has been well described as the process whereby the notes of the teacher become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either.

Mortimer Adler
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Mortimer Adler
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.

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

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
It is only by struggling with difficult books, books over one's head, that anyone learns to read.

Mortimer Adler
To avoid this error, the error of assuming that that to be widely read and to be well read are the same thing, we must consider a certain distinction in types of learning.... In the history of education, men have often distinguished between learning by instruction and learning by discovery.... Discovery stands to instruction as learning without a teacher stands to learning through the help of one. In both cases the activity of learning goes on in the one who learns. It would be a mistake to suppose that discovery is active learning, and instruction passive. There is no inactive learning, just as there is no inactive reading. This is so true, in fact, that a better way to make the distinction clear is to call instruction aided discovery.

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

Mortimer Adler
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 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
The dictionary also invites a playful reading. It challenges anyone to sit down with it in an idle moment. There are worse ways to kill time.

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