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My chief reason for choosing Christianity was because the mysteries were incomprehensible. What's the point of revelation if we could figure it out ourselves? If it were wholly comprehensible, then it would just be another philosophy.

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
Philosophy
Choosing
Point
Revelations
Another
Chief
Reason
Chiefs
Comprehensible
Would
Figure
Incomprehensible
Figures
Mysteries
Christianity
Wholly
Mystery
Revelation

More quotes by Mortimer Adler

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The dictionary also invites a playful reading. It challenges anyone to sit down with it in an idle moment. There are worse ways to kill time.
Mortimer Adler
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Angels are not merely forms of extraterrestrial intelligence. They are forms of extra-cosmic intelligence.
Mortimer Adler
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Love wishes to perpetuate itself. Love wishes for immortality.
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Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely.
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I suspect that most of the individuals who have religious faith are content with blind faith
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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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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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
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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
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All books will become light in proportion as you find light in them.
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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True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.
Mortimer Adler
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... The person who, at any stage of a conversation, disagrees, should at least hope to reach agreement in the end. He should be as much prepared to have his own mind changed as seek to change the mind of another ... No one who looks upon disagreement as an occasion for teaching another should forget that it is also an occasion for being taught.
Mortimer Adler
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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.
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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... 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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Let me roughly divide books into those which compete with the movies and those with which the movies cannot compete. They are the books that can elevate or instruct. If they are fine works of fiction, they can deepen your appreciation of human life. If they are serious works of nonfiction, they can inform or enlighten you.
Mortimer Adler
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Emancipation of human labor from economic servitude and exploitation, i.e., from organizations of production in which the conditions of work are determined by a master class who own the means of production, and in which the fruits of work are alienated from workers to the benefit of masters.
Mortimer Adler
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Love can be unselfish, in the sense of being benevolent and generous, without being selfless.
Mortimer Adler
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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