Mortimer Adler Quotes

My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

I don't think ordinary things are very interesting, so I try to imagine a world that is less ordinary.

Capability means imagination.

A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.

When you think like a child your imagination is free and anything is possible.

You know, it's a truism that writers for children must still be children themselves, deep down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surprise at the world.

I love child things because there's so much mystery when you're a child.

The majority of business men are not capable of an original thought, simply because they cannot escape the tyranny of reason.

If there's an original thought out there, I could use one right now.

With writing music and writing songs and recording music and coming up with stuff, you need to kind of reengage that kind of inner child to come up with interesting perceptions.

The secret of innovation is to see what all see but think what none think

Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.

The spirit of poetry combines the profundity of the philosopher and the child's delight in bright pictures.

Because the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.

I was playing when I invented the aqualung. I think play is the most serious thing in the world.

Great minds don't think alike. If they did, the Patent Office would only have about fifty inventions.

As a child I did a lot of imaginary bits, you know. It depends on the individual, I enjoyed then knocking the nail in, I enjoy knocking nails in walls to hang pictures up, but I also enjoy thinking 'I'm gonna do that' but I actually won't do it, I enjoy imagining doing things just as much.

Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work least, for they are thinking out inventions.

Think, the successful idea is always in your mind. Think it out.

As children, our imaginations are vibrant, and our hearts are open... Everything amazes us, and we think anything is possible. We continuously experience life with a sense of newness and unbridled curiosity.

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.

Art keeps one young, I think, because it keeps one perpetually a beginner, perpetually a child.

A child's attitude toward everything is an artist's attitude.

Imagination is the beginning of reality.