THEODOR W. ADORNO QUOTES III

German sociologist & philosopher (1903-1969)

On their way toward modern science human beings have discarded meaning. The concept is replaced by the formula, the cause by rules and probability.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Dialectic of Enlightenment

Tags: science


It is Proust's courtesy to spare the reader the embarrassment of believing himself cleverer than the author.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: Marcel Proust


It is incumbent upon philosophy ... to provide a refuge for freedom. Not that there is any hope that it could break the political tendencies that are throttling freedom throughout the world both from within and without and whose violence permeates the very fabric of philosophical argumentation.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Why Still Philosophy?

Tags: philosophy, freedom


Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

"Was bedeutet Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit"

Tags: society


In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than the glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia


The taboos that constitute a man's intellectual stature, often sedimented experiences and unarticulated insights, always operate against inner impulses that he has learned to condemn, but which are so strong that only an unquestioning and unquestioned authority can hold them in check.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: authority


In the nineteenth century the Germans painted their dream and the outcome was invariably vegetable. The French needed only to paint a vegetable and it was already a dream.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: dreams, France


Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: life


The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.

THEODOR ADORNO

Dialectic of Enlightenment

Tags: neutrality


In the general tendency toward specialization, philosophy too has established itself as a specialized discipline, one purified of all specific content. In so doing, philosophy has denied its own constitutive concept: the intellectual freedom that does not obey the dictates of specialized knowledge.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Why still Philosophy?

Tags: philosophy, knowledge


There is no love that is not an echo.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: love


The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Dialectic of Enlightenment

Tags: advertising


True thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: thought, understanding


To say "we" and mean "I" is one of the most recondite insults.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia


Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

attributed, The Apocalyptic Animal of Late Capitalism

Tags: animals


Philosophy that satisfies its own intention, and does not childishly skip behind its own history and the real one, has its lifeblood in the resistance against the common practices of today and what they serve, against the justification of what happens to be the case.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Why Still Philosophy?

Tags: philosophy


Philosophy ... must not bargain away anything of the emphatic concept of truth.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Why Still Philosophy?

Tags: philosophy, truth


It is one of the basic tenets of fascist leadership to keep primary libidinal energy on an unconscious level so as to divert its manifestations in a way suitable to political ends.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

"Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda", The Essential Frankfurt School Reader


He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest. While he gropingly forms his own life in the frail image of a true existence, he should never forget its frailty, nor how little the image is a substitute for true life. Against such awareness, however, pulls the momentum of the bourgeois within him.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: life


But there is another conclusion: to laugh at logic if it runs counter to the interests of men.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Dialectic of Enlightenment

Tags: logic