Mortimer Adler Quotes

Mortimer Adler Biography
Type: Philosopher
Nationality: American
Born: December 28, 1902
Died: June 28, 2001

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wonder if most people ever ask themselves why love is connected with reproduction. And if they do ask themselves about this, I wonder what answer they give.
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

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

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

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

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

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.
Mortimer Adler

Love wishes to perpetuate itself. Love wishes for immortality.
Mortimer Adler

Love without conversation is impossible.
Mortimer Adler

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

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