Quote

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

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Mortimer Adler
Age: 98 †
Born: 1902
Born: December 28
Died: 2001
Died: June 28
Philosopher
Teacher
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Mortimer J. Adler
Mortimer Adler
Love
Based
Utility
Return
Exchange
Pleasure
Association
Getting
Consists
True
Dues
Without
Compromise
Giving
Fairs
Owed
Never
Fair
Associations

More quotes by Mortimer Adler

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I suspect that most of the individuals who have religious faith are content with blind faith. They feel no obligation to understand what they believe. They may even wish not to have their beliefs disturbed by thought.
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All books will become light in proportion as you find light in them.
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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.
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Angels are not merely forms of extraterrestrial intelligence. They are forms of extra-cosmic intelligence.
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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
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Erotic or sexual love can truly be love if it is not selfishly sexual or lustful.
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More consequences for thought and action follow the affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other basic question.
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Books are absent teachers.
Mortimer Adler
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There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception.
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Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree?
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There is no more irritating fellow than the man who tries to settle an argument about communism, or justice, or liberty, by quoting from Webster.
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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.
Mortimer Adler
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Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely.
Mortimer Adler
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Political democracy cannot flourish under all economic conditions. Democracy requires an economic system which supports the political ideals of liberty and equality for all. Men cannot exercise freedom in the political sphere when they are deprived of it in the economic sphere.
Mortimer Adler
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All genuine learning is active, not passive.
Mortimer Adler
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Love wishes to perpetuate itself. Love wishes for immortality.
Mortimer Adler
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... 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.
Mortimer Adler
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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
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The love which moves the world, according to common Christian belief, is God's love and the love of God.
Mortimer Adler
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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