Mortimer Adler a philosopher born in Germany to a Jewish family. Adler step foot into journalism after dropping out of school at the age of 14. But his love for people who he called heroes, made him work hard and as a result he finally got a doctorate in philosophy. He usually liked to write about the love and various aspects of it.
Adler was popular among the general audience too. He said:
Unlike many of my contemporaries, I never write books for my fellow professors to read. I have no interest in the academic audience at all. I’m interested in Joe Doakes. A general audience can read any book I write – and they do.
Here are a few of his great quotes regarding love, life and more.
On Love:
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.
I wonder if most people ever ask themselves why love is connected with reproduction. And if they do ask themselves about this, I wonder what answer they give.
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
We love even when our love is not requited.
Love wishes to perpetuate itself. Love wishes for immortality.
I find the selectivity of erotic love – the choice of this man or this woman – much more intelligible if liking the person is the origin of sexual interest, rather than the other way.
In English we must use adjectives to distinguish the different kinds of love for which the ancients had distinct names.
Conjugal love, or the friendship of spouses, can persist even after sexual desires have weakened, withered, and disappeared.
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.
If one wants another only for some self-satisfaction, usually in the form of sensual pleasure, that wrong desire takes the form of lust rather than love.
Ultimately, we wish the joy of perfect union with the person we love.
Aristotle uses a mother’s love for her child as the prime example of love or friendship.
When we ask for love, we don’t ask others to be fair to us-but rather to care for us, to be considerate of us. There is a world of difference here between demanding justice… and begging or pleading for love.
There is only one situation I can think of in which men and women make an effort to read better than they usually do. It is when they are in love and reading a love letter.
On Learning:
The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.
On Life:
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.
An educated person is one who, through the travail of his own life, has assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture.
Other Quotes:
We acknowledge but one motive – to follow the truth as we know it, whither soever 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. ~Mortimer Adler
The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.
Friendship is a very taxing and arduous form of leisure activity.
One of the aims of sexual union is procreation – the creation by reproduction of an image of itself, of the union.