Mortimer Adler Quotes

There is nothing wrong with underlining personal agency, but there is something unfair about using personal responsibility as a basis for assigning blame while simultaneously denying those who are being blamed the opportunity to exert agency in their lives

You gotta judge a man by his principles.

Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.

I strongly believe in my own rights and wrongs and impose them on myself and my family.

I believe I'm a better authority than anybody else in America on my own wife. I have never known a person with a stronger sense of right and wrong in my life ever.

Actions will be judged according to intentions.

We are not expecting Utopia here on this earth. But God meant things to be much easier than we have made them. A man has a natural right to food, clothing, and shelter. A certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life.

Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

We can't exempt ourselves from the same moral calculus that we are willing to apply to others.

It is an outrage that people can take other people's lives when they obviously haven't got their own lives in order.

Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.

The Republicans or conservatives always, when it comes to judging, when it comes to legalities, always try to do the right thing even if it harms their interests.

Temptations make one very censorious. If you are virtuous you condemn the wicked and if you are wicked, you condemn the virtuous.

Health, happiness and success depend upon the fighting spirit of each person. The big thing is not what happens to us in life, but what we do about what happens to us.

The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.

Look at the word responsibility-"response-ability"-the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.

By and large, life will give you what you deserve and it doesn't give a damn what you like. So it is up to you to take full responsibility to connect what you want with what you need to do to get it, and then to do those things.

I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not if you put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don’t expect Carter or Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself.

If there are people who feel that God wants them to change the structures of society, that is something between them and their God. We must serve him in whatever way we are called. I am called to help the individual; to love each poor person. Not to deal with institutions. I am in no position to judge.

All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.

A good life is not measured by any biblical span.

The vision of the anointed is one in which ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from 'society,' rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by 'society'.

Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament.

Conscience warns us as a friend before it punishes us as a judge.