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All Mortimer Adler Quotes
We are selfish when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good for ourselves. We are altruistic when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good of others.
Mortimer Adler
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Ultimately, we wish the joy of perfect union with the person we love.
Mortimer Adler
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Think how different human societies would be if they were based on love rather than justice. But no such societies have ever existed on earth.
Mortimer Adler
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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.
Mortimer Adler
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Theories of love are found in the works of scientists, philosophers, and theologians.
Mortimer Adler
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Aristotle uses a mother's love for her child as the prime example of love or friendship.
Mortimer Adler
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Erotic or sexual love can truly be love if it is not selfishly sexual or lustful.
Mortimer Adler
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Conjugal love, or the friendship of spouses, can persist even after sexual desires have weakened, withered, and disappeared.
Mortimer Adler
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Men value things in three ways: as useful, as pleasant or sources of pleasure, and as excellent, or as intrinsically admirable or honorable.
Mortimer Adler
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The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea.
Mortimer Adler
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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.
Mortimer Adler
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Ask others about themselves, at the same time, be on guard not to talk too much about yourself.
Mortimer Adler
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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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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 Adler
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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.
Mortimer Adler
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