Quotes from Mortimer Adler

The trouble with life in America today is not that we work too much but that our free time is too much engaged in play and amusement so that too little of it is left for the kind of leisure activities that really are the most profitable part of human life.

If communications were not complex, structural outlining would be unnecessary. If language were a perfect medium instead of a relatively opaque one, there would be no need for interpretation. If error and ignorance did not circumscribe truth and knowledge, we should not have to be critical.

always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.

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

We acknowledge but one motive - to follow the truth as we know it, whithersoever it may lead us; but in our heart of hearts we are well assured that the truth which has made us free, will in the end make us glad also.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Freud's view is that all love is sexual in its origin or its basis. Even those loves which do not appear to be sexual or erotic have a sexual root or core. They are all sublimations of the sexual instinct.

Friendship is a very taxing and arduous form of leisure activity.