Quote

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

Mortimer Adler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Unselfishness
Unselfish
Benevolent
Selfless
Generous
Sense
Without

More quotes by Mortimer Adler

Image
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.
Mortimer Adler
Image
Books are absent teachers.
Mortimer Adler
Image
True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.
Mortimer Adler
Image
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
Image
Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts.
Mortimer Adler
Image
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.
Mortimer Adler
Image
I suspect that most of the individuals who have religious faith are content with blind faith
Mortimer Adler
Image
Angels are able to know and understand better than the human intellect can, precisely because such knowledge and understanding comes to them by way of ideas infused in them by God.
Mortimer Adler
Image
All genuine learning is active, not passive.
Mortimer Adler
Image
The ability to retain a child's view of the world with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare - and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking.
Mortimer Adler
Image
The love which moves the world, according to common Christian belief, is God's love and the love of God.
Mortimer Adler
Image
Sometimes it feels like I'm thinking against the wind.
Mortimer Adler
Image
The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea.
Mortimer Adler
Image
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.
Mortimer Adler
Image
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
Image
Erotic or sexual love can truly be love if it is not selfishly sexual or lustful.
Mortimer Adler
Image
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
Image
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.
Mortimer Adler
Image
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?
Mortimer Adler
Image
The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.
Mortimer Adler