Top 120 Mortimer J. Adler Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

2. “The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

3. “All genuine learning is active, not passive.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

4. “Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

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5. “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

6. “All genuine learning is active, not passive. It involves the use of the mind, not just the memory. It is a process of discovery, in which the student is the main agent, not the teacher.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

7. “Philosophy is everybody’s business.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

8. “To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

9. “The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

10. “All books will become light in proportion as you find light in them.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

11. “The materialist assumption that spiritual substances do not exist is as much an act of faith as the religious belief in the reality of angels.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

12. “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 J. Adler

13. “The ultimate end of education is happiness or a good human life, a life enriched by the possession of every kind of good, by the enjoyment of every type of satisfaction.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

14. “A lecture has been well described as the process whereby the notes of the teacher become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

15. “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

16. “You must be able to say “I understand,” before you can say “I agree,” or “I disagree,” or “I suspend judgment.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

17. “Education is the sum total of one’s experience, and the purpose of higher education is to widen our experiences beyond the circumscribed existence or our own daily lives.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

18. “Remember Bacon’s recommendation to the reader: “Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

19. “When you buy a book, you establish a property right in it, just as you do in clothes or furniture when you buy and pay for them. But the act of purchase is actually only the prelude to possession in the case of a book. Full ownership of a book only comes when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it – which comes to the same thing – is by writing in it.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

20. “Scientific objectivity is not the absence of initial bias. It is attained by frank confession of it.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

21. “Ultimately, we wish the joy of perfect union with the person we love.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

22. “Erotic or sexual love can truly be love if it is not selfishly sexual or lustful.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

23. “One reader is better than another in proportion as he is able of a greater range of activity in reading and exerts more effort.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

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24. “Books are absent teachers.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

25. “If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

26. “Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

27. “In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

28. “The truly great books are the few books that are over everybody’s head all of the time.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

29. “We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

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

— Mortimer J. Adler

31. “The path of true learning is strewn with rocks, not roses.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

32. “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 J. Adler

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

— Mortimer J. Adler

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

— Mortimer J. Adler

35. “When we speak of someone as “well-read,” we should have this ideal in mind. Too often, we use that phrase to mean the quantity rather than the quality of reading. A person who has read widely but not well deserves to be pitied rather than praised. As Thomas Hobbes said, “If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

36. “Men are creatures of passion and prejudice. The language they must use to communicate is an imperfect medium, clouded by emotion and colored by interest, as well as inadequately transparent for thought.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

37. “Finally, do not try to understand every word or page of a difficult book the first time through. This is the most important rule of all; it is the essence of inspectional reading.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

38. “Work that is pure toil, done solely for the sake of the money it earns, is also sheer drudgery because it is stultifying rather than self improving.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

39. “A mind not agitated by good questions cannot appreciate the significance of even the best answers. It is easy enough to learn the answers. But to develop actively inquisitive minds, alive with real questions, profound questions – that is another story.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

40. “The beauty of any work of art is related to the pleasure it gives us when we know it well.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

41. “The mind can atrophy, like the muscles, if it is not used.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

42. “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 J. Adler

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43. “If your friend wishes to read your ‘Plutarch’s Lives,’ ‘Shakespeare,’ or ‘The Federalist Papers,’ tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat – but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

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44. “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 J. Adler

45. “The first stage of elementary reading – reading readiness – corresponds to pre-school and kindergarten experiences.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

46. “As arts, grammar and logic are concerned with language in relation to thought and thought in relation to language. That is why skill in both reading and writing is gained through these arts.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

47. “Reading and the Democratic Ideal of Education.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

48. “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 J. Adler

49. “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.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

50. “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 J. Adler