Mortimer Adler Quotes

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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.

Mortimer Adler
The only standard we have for judging all of our social, economic, and political institutions and arrangements as just or unjust, as good or bad, as better or worse, derives from our conception of the good life for man on earth, and from our conviction that, given certain external conditions, it is possible for men to make good lives for themselves by their own efforts.

Mortimer Adler
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.

Mortimer Adler
Montaigne speaks of an Abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it. The first is the ignorance of those who, not knowing their A-B-C's, cannot read at all. The second is the ignorance of those who have misread many books. They are, as Alexander Pope rightly calls them, bookful blockheads, ignorantly read. 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 Adler
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.

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

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

Mortimer Adler
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 Adler
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.

Mortimer Adler
Fame does not tarnish as honor does when it is unmerited.

Mortimer Adler
Above all, money-making and other external indices of social success must become subordinate to the inner attainments of moral and intellectual virtue.

Mortimer Adler
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 Adler
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.

Mortimer Adler
Even when you have been somewhat enlightened by what you have read, you are called upon to continue the search for significance.

Mortimer Adler
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.

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

Mortimer Adler
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
The best protection against propaganda of any sort is the recognition of it for what it is. 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. Propaganda taken in that way is like a drug you do not know you are swallowing. The effect is mysterious; you do not know afterwards why you feel or think the way you do.

Mortimer Adler
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. Not just more knowledgeable — books that provide nothing but information can produce that result. But wiser, in the sense that you are more deeply aware of the great and enduring truths of human life.

Mortimer Adler
It is obvious that teaching is a very special art, sharing with only two other arts, agriculture and medicine, an exceptionally important characteristic A doctor may do many things for his patient, but in the final analysis, it is the patient himself who must get well, grow in health. The farmer does many things for his plants or animals, but in the final analysis, it is they that must grow in size and excellence. Similarly, although the teacher may help his student in many ways, it is the student himself who must do the learning. Knowledge must grow in his mind if learning is to take place.

Mortimer Adler
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.

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

Mortimer Adler
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.

Mortimer Adler
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 Adler
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.

Mortimer Adler
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.

Mortimer Adler
Every seminar should involve at its conclusion the assignment of a short composition in which students would attempt to state how their understanding of the book discussed in the seminar was increased by their participation in the discussion.

Mortimer Adler
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 Adler
For the educational establishment... test scores are treated as indications of the extent to which the required ground covering has been done.... as educationally significant. However, while they may be prognostic of a child's ability to get through school... they do not provide us with an appraisal of the child's progress in the long process of becoming a generally educated human being — the advance made toward a more skillful, thoughtful, and cultivated mind.

Mortimer Adler
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