Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men.
– Mortimer Adler
One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian.
– Mortimer Adler
The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea.
– Mortimer Adler
There is only one situation I can think of in which men and women make an effort to read better than they usually do. It is when they are in love and reading a love letter.
– Mortimer Adler
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.
– Mortimer Adler
When we ask for love, we don't ask others to be fair to us-but rather to care for us, to be considerate of us. There is a world of difference here between demanding justice... and begging or pleading for love.
– Mortimer Adler
Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely.
– Mortimer Adler
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
The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.
– 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
Friendship is a very taxing and arduous form of leisure activity.
– Mortimer Adler
Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.
– Mortimer Adler
Conjugal love, or the friendship of spouses, can persist even after sexual desires have weakened, withered, and disappeared.
– Mortimer Adler
Aristotle uses a mother's love for her child as the prime example of love or friendship.