Mortimer Adler Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• It's not how many books you get through, it's how many books get through you.

  Mortimer Adler

  Book

  6 Copy quote

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

  Mortimer Adler

  Book, Way, Reader

  Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren (2014). “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading”, p.171, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

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

  Mortimer Adler

  Book, Ideas, Telephones

  Mortimer Jerome Adler, Geraldine Van Doren (1988). “Reforming education: the opening of the American mind”, Macmillan Pub Co

  7 Copy quote

• The tragedy of being both rational and animal seems to consist in having to choose between duty and desire rather than in making any particular choice

  Mortimer Adler

  Animal, Choices, Desire

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Teacher, Mind, Lectures

  8 Copy quote

• If a book is easy and fits nicely into all your language conventions and thought forms, then you probably will not grow much from reading it. It may be entertaining, but not enlarging to your understanding. It’s the hard books that count. Raking is easy, but all you get is leaves; digging is hard, but you might find diamonds.

  Mortimer Adler

  Book, Reading, Understanding

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Justice, Different

  5 Copy quote

• Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; if not, you probably should not be bothering with his book. But understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.

  Mortimer Adler

  Teacher, Book, Reading

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Teacher, Memories, Teaching

  13 Copy quote

• ... 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

  Teaching, Agreement, Mind

  Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren (2014). “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Teacher, Book, Mean

  Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren (2014). “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

  21 Copy quote

• 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

  Taken, Heart, Thinking

  Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren (2014). “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading”, p.194, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Reading, Order

  Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren (2014). “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading”, p.330, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Understanding, Facts, Obstacles

  Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren (2014). “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

  12 Copy quote

• Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely.

  Mortimer Adler

  Lonely, Being Alone, Feeling Alone

  32 Copy quote

• 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

  Self, Lust, Sensual

  Mortimer Jerome Adler (1991). “Desires, Right & Wrong: The Ethics of Enough”, MacMillan Publishing Company

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Selfish, Concerned

  Mortimer Jerome Adler (1991). “Desires, Right & Wrong: The Ethics of Enough”, MacMillan Publishing Company

  4 Copy quote

• I suspect that most of the individuals who have religious faith are content with blind faith

  Mortimer Adler

  Religious, Blind, Individual

  Mortimer Jerome Adler (1992). “A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror: Further Autobiographical Reflections of a Philosopher at Large”, MacMillan Publishing Company

  6 Copy quote

• Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.

  Mortimer Adler

  Men, Liberty, Arbitrary

  53 Copy quote

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

  Mortimer Adler

  Life, Wisdom, Book

  Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren (2014). “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading”, p.121, Simon and Schuster

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Satisfaction, Kind, Ends

  Mortimer Jerome Adler (1977). “Reforming Education: The Schooling of a People and Their Education Beyond Schooling”, Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press

  38 Copy quote

• 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

  Children, Mean, Thinking

  16 Copy quote

• Let me roughly divide books into those which compete with the movies and those with which the movies cannot compete. They are the books that can elevate or instruct. If they are fine works of fiction, they can deepen your appreciation of human life. If they are serious works of nonfiction, they can inform or enlighten you.

  Mortimer Adler

  Appreciation, Book, Nonfiction

  4 Copy quote

• There is a strange fact about the human mind, a fact that differentiates the mind sharply from the body. The body is limited in ways that the mind is not. One sign of this is that the body does not continue indefinitely to grow in strength and develop in skill and grace. By the time most people are thirty years old, their bodies are as good as they will ever be; in fact, many persons' bodies have begun to deteriorate by that time. But there is no limit to the amount of growth and development that the mind can sustain. The mind does not stop growing at any particular age.

  Mortimer Adler

  Years, Skills, People

  8 Copy quote

• Sin is not only manifested in certain acts that are forbidden by divine command. Sin also appears in attitudes and dispositions and feelings. Lust and hate are sins as well as adultery and murder. And, in the traditional Christian view, despair and chronic boredom - unaccompanied by any vicious act - are serious sins. They are expressions of man's separation from God, as the ultimate good, meaning, and end of human existence.

  Mortimer Adler

  Christian, Attitude, Hate

  4 Copy quote

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