Explore Quotes by 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.

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.

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

We love even when our love is not requited.

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

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

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

Conjugal love, or the friendship of spouses, persists after sexual desires have weakened, withered, and disappeared.

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

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

Love without conversation is impossible.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 only standard we have for judging all of our social, economic, and political institutions and arrangements as just or unjust, as good or bad, as better or worse, derives from our conception of the good life for man on earth, and from our conviction that, given certain external conditions, it is possible for men to make good lives for themselves by their own efforts.

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