Mortimer Adler
Mortimer Adler
Mortimer Jerome Adlerwas an American philosopher, educator, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for long stretches in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Mateo, California. He worked for Columbia University, the University of Chicago, Encyclopædia Britannica, and Adler's own Institute for Philosophical Research...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth28 December 1902
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
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.
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.
A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever.
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.
In idling, the motor's running, but you're letting your mind take in anything. Things pop into it. Those are the gifts of subterranean conscious.
Being influential is not the mark of a great book.
Idling is important. Most people don't know how. They're afraid of it. This explains why they turn on the television set or pick up the newspaper. They think they have to be doing something.
An educated person is one who, through the travail of his own life, has assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture.
Work is toil: what one does only to earn a living. If it gives pleasure, it is leisure.
Leisure is not synonymous with time. Nor is it a noun. Leisure is a verb. I leisure. You leisure.
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.
Inquiry not only begins with wonder, but usually ends with it also.