Adler Quotes

The golden rule of drums is hands clapping and feet tapping, and when you are in and out of consciousness, you can't do that to best of your ability.

Only something extremely dire and disabling will ever stop a real writer from writing. Retirement is never an option.

The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth.

Self-pity” is just sadness, I think, in the pejorative.

The style of flirtation specific to classrooms was of service to the students all their lives.

... always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.

The love which moves the world, according to common Christian belief, is God's love and the love of God.

The office of the public teacher is an unenviable and thankless one.

I used to wake up in the morning and say, 'Oh, God.' Now I wake up in the morning and look forward to life.

Perhaps a hundred people assembled one evening, May 15, 1876, at the time when the country was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its political independence.

Aristotle uses a mother's love for her child as the prime example of love or friendship.

If you desire information on some point of law, you are not likely to ponder over the ponderous tomes of legal writers in order to obtain the knowledge you seek, by your own unaided efforts.

Dogma is the convictions of one man imposed authoritatively upon others.

People may be said to resemble the pieces of a puzzle, each unique, yet each essential to bring out a complete picture.

We stand, as it were, on the shore, and see multitudes of our fellow beings struggling in the water, stretching forth their arms, sinking, drowning, and we are powerless to assist them.

The ethical manifold, conceived of as unified, furnishes, or rather is, the ideal of the whole.

Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.

Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience.

But even our pleasures are calculated and business like. We measure our enjoyments by the sum expended. Our salons are often little better than bazaars of fashion.

You do not build your own houses, nor make your own garments, nor bake your own bread, simply because you know that if you were to attempt all these things they would all be more or less ill done.

There is hardly any deviancy, no matter how reprehensible in one context, which is not extolled as a virtue in another. There are no natural crimes, only legal ones.

No amount of money given in charity, nothing but the abandonment of this hateful trade, can atone for this great sin against God, Israel and Humanity.

I already committed Darren [Criss] to giving a song.

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.

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.

The tragedy of being both rational and animal seems to consist in having to choose between duty and desire rather than in making any particular choice

Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.

Theories of love are found in the works of scientists, philosophers, and theologians.

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

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.

It's not a college degree that makes a writer. The great thing is to have a story to tell.

I am one of those people who can't help getting a kick out of life - even when it's a kick in the teeth.

My home is in whatever town I'm booked.

I couldn't live my reputation down - all right then, I'd live up to it.

Most movies are not very good. Most people know it and like to see them anyway.

Moral self-infatuation has its own corruptions, after all. With time, almost every other principle of the magazine acquired an ironic echo, a sort of cackling aftermath.

There is a difference, of course, between real sentiment and the trash of shared experience.

I took a little celebrational nap.

The radical intelligence in the moderate position is the only place where the center holds. Or so it seems.

Being neurotic seemed to be a kind of wild card, an all-purpose explanation.

Things have changed very much, several times, since I grew up, and, like everyone in New York except the intellectuals, I have led several lives and I still lead some of them.

There are times when every act, no matter how private and unconscious, becomes political.

Did I throw the most important thing perhaps, by accident, away?

There are so many different types of writers. It's just sheer coincidence that they're all called writers.

Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having; it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from.

A favorite strategy was the paragraph-terminating: Right? Followed immediately by Wrong. This linear invitation to a mugging was considered a strategy of wit.

Hardly anyone about whom I deeply care at all resembles anyone else I have ever met, or heard of, or read about in literature.

If you once cede to the Court the power to decide elections, let alone even the power to halt counting of the votes, then you have ceded it everything.

the time for prizes and competitions at art festivals is over. Competition is too closely tied to values that are alien to the arts.

Don't try to follow any trends, just concentrate on writing great songs and knowing your instrument. All the other stuff will fall into place.