Theodor Adorno Quotes
"No emancipation without that of society."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Society)
"Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Hunger, Language, Poor, Words)
"Only a humanity to whom death has become as indifferent as its members, that has itself died, can inflict it administratively on innumerable people."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Death, People, Humanity)
"Once the last trace of emotion has been eradicated, nothing remains of thought but absolute tautology."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Thought, Emotion, Nothing)
"Not only is the self entwined in society; it owes society its existence in the most literal sense."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Society, Existence, Self, Sense)
"Normality is death."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Death, Normality)
"The task of art today is to bring chaos into order."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Art, Chaos, Order, Today)
"No harm comes to man from outside alone: dumbness is the objective spirit."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Harm, Man, Spirit)
"Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Men, Technology)
"Modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological, category."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Modernity)
"Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Love, Strength, May, Will)
"Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Love, Power)
"Life has become the ideology of its own absence."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Life, Absence, Ideology)
"Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or his good opinion."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Lies, Opinion)
"Intelligence is a moral category."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Intelligence)
"None of the abstract concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than that of eternal peace."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Peace, Utopia)
"The hardest hit, as everywhere, are those who have no choice."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Choice)
"The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Eye)
"The recent past always presents itself as if destroyed by catastrophes."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Catastrophes, Past)
"Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: People)
"The most powerful person is he who is able to do least himself and burden others most with the things for which he lends his name and pockets the credit."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Burden, Credit, Name)
"The man for whom time stretches out painfully is one waiting in vain, disappointed at not finding tomorrow already continuing yesterday."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Time, Man, Tomorrow, Waiting, Yesterday)
"The joke of our time is the suicide of intention."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Time, Intention, Suicide)
"Quality is decided by the depth at which the work incorporates the alternatives within itself, and so masters them."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Work, Quality)
"The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Being)
"Tact is the discrimination of differences. It consists in conscious deviations."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Discrimination, Tact)
"The good man is he who rules himself as he does his own property: his autonomous being is modelled on material power."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Power, Being, Man, Rules)
"The gods look in pleasure on penitent sinners."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Gods, Pleasure)
"The first and only principle of sexual ethics: the accuser is always in the wrong."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: First, Wrong)
"The culture industry not so much adapts to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Culture)
"The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Power)
"In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Age, Individuality, Question)
"The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Exploitation, Laws)
"Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Art, Truth, Lie, Being, Magic)
"Insane sects grow with the same rhythm as big organizations. It is the rhythm of total destruction."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Destruction)
"Exuberant health is always, as such, sickness also."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Health, Sickness)
"Everything that has ever been called folk art has always reflected domination."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Art, Folk)
"Every work of art is an uncommitted crime."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Art, Work, Crime)
"Domination delegates the physical violence on which it rests to the dominated."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Violence)
"But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Life, Despair)
"For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Man, Writing)
"Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Art, Right)
"Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Choices, Freedom)
"Anti-Semitism is the rumour about the Jews."
- Theodor Adorno
"An emancipated society, on the other hand, would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Society, State)
"All satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay. Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Blind, Satire)
"Advice to intellectuals: let no-one represent you."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Advice)
"A pencil and rubber are of more use to thought than a battalion of assistants. To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Happiness, Thought)
"A German is someone who cannot tell a lie without believing it himself."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Lie)
"Because thought has by now been perverted into the solving of assigned problems, even what is not assigned is processed like a problem."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Thought, Now, Problems)
"History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: History, Language)
"The specific is not exclusive: it lacks the aspiration to totality."
- Theodor Adorno
"In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Responsibility, Wrong)
"In psycho-analysis nothing is true except the exaggerations."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Nothing)
"In many people it is already an impertinence to say 'I'."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: People)
"In his state of complete powerlessness the individual perceives the time he has left to live as a brief reprieve."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Time, State)
"If time is money, it seems moral to save time, above all one's own, and such parsimony is excused by consideration for others. One is straight-forward."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Time, Money, Consideration)
"Fascism is itself less 'ideological', in so far as it openly proclaims the principle of domination that is elsewhere concealed."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Fascism)
"Horror is beyond the reach of psychology."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Horror, Psychology)
"In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than glorification of the splendid system that makes them so."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: End, Nothing)
"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."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Society, Ideology, Interest, Risk)
"He who matures early lives in anticipation."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Anticipation)
"He who integrates is lost."
- Theodor Adorno
"He who has loved and who betrays love does harm not only to the image of the past, but to the past itself."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Love, Harm, Past)
"He who has laughter on his side has no need of proof."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Laughter, Proof)
"Happiness is obsolete: uneconomic."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Happiness)
"If across the Atlantic the ideology was pride, here it is delivering the goods."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Ideology, Pride)
"Wrong life cannot be lived rightly."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Life, Wrong)
"There is no love that is not an echo."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Love, Echo)
"The whole is the false."
- Theodor Adorno
"Thinking no longer means anymore than checking at each moment whether one can indeed think."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Thinking)
"To say 'we' and mean 'I' is one of the most recondite insults."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Insults)
"Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Ego, Embarrassment, Nothing, Reflection, Self, Today)
"True thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Thoughts)
"Truth is inseperable from the illusory belief that from the figures of the unreal one day, in spite of all, real deliverance will come."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Truth, Belief, Day, Will)
"When all actions are mathematically calculated, they also take on a stupid quality."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Quality, Actions)
"Work while you work, play while you play - this is a basic rule of repressive self-discipline."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Work, Play, Self)
"The poor are prevented from thinking by the discipline of others, the rich by their own."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Discipline, Poor, Thinking)