Time & Perspective Quote by Mortimer Adler

Adler’s line is etiquette with a blade in it: a reminder that conversation is less self-expression than moral discipline. Coming from a philosopher who spent his life trying to teach people how to read, argue, and think in public, it isn’t a coy tip for winning friends. It’s a theory of attention. “Ask others about themselves” sounds benign until you feel the second clause tighten the screws: “be on guard.” Adler frames self-talk as a temptation, not a right. The point isn’t that you might bore people; it’s that you might drift into a flattering delusion that your interior monologue deserves an audience.

The subtext is a critique of status performance. Talking about yourself is often a bid to control the room: to set the topic, to claim expertise, to turn exchange into audition. Adler’s corrective suggests that real intelligence shows up as curiosity. Questions are a way of conceding you don’t own the world, that other people contain information you can’t manufacture. There’s also a tactical shrewdness here: by asking, you learn; by oversharing, you leak. “Guard” hints at reputational risk and the ease with which sincerity becomes self-advertising.

Context matters. Adler was a public intellectual in an era that still believed conversation could be educative, not just performative. Today, when platforms monetize self-disclosure and personal branding, his warning lands as quietly radical. He’s arguing for an older, harder virtue: restraint as respect, curiosity as humility, listening as a kind of power.