Mortimer Adler Quotes

Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error.

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

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.

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.

Philosophy is everybody's business.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Books are absent teachers.

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?

Television, radio, and all the sources of amusement and information that surround us in our daily lives are also artificial props. They can give us the impression that our minds are active, because we are required to react to stimuli from the outside. But the power of those external stimuli to keep us going is limited. They are like drugs. We grow used to them, and we continuously need more and more of them. Eventually, they have little or no effect. Then, if we lack resources within ourselves, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. And we we cease to grow, we begin to die.

Sometimes it feels like I'm thinking against the wind.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.