Theodor Adorno Quotes

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• The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness

  Theodor Adorno

  Culture, Conformity, Consciousness

  Theodor W Adorno (2005). “The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture”, p.104, Routledge

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

  Theodor Adorno

  Animal, Thinking, Holocaust

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• People have so manipulated the concept of freedom that it finally boils down to the right of the stronger and richer to take from the weaker and poorer whatever they still have.

  Theodor Adorno

  People, Stronger, Stills

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• In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes.

  Theodor Adorno

  Responsibility, Abstract, Concrete

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.25, Verso

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• That all men are alike is exactly what society would like to hear. It considers actual or imagined differences as stigmas indicating that not enough has yet been done; that something has still been left outside its machinery, not quite determined by its totality.

  Theodor Adorno

  Men, Differences, Culture

  Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.79, Univ of California Press

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• Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar.

  Theodor Adorno

  Love, Love Is, Romance

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.191, Verso

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• The forms of art reflect the history of man more truthfully than do documents themselves.

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, Men, Form

  Theodor W. Adorno (2014). “Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction: Notes, a Draft and Two Schemata”, p.236, John Wiley & Sons

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• There is no love that is not an echo.

  Theodor Adorno

  Echoes, No Love

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.217, Verso

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• As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities.

  Theodor Adorno

  Successful, People, Done

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• 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 Adorno

  Triumph, Culture, Use

  Theodor W Adorno (2005). “The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture”, p.12, Routledge

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

  Theodor Adorno

  Mean, Comeback, Insult

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• The task of art today is to bring chaos into order.

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, Order, Design

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.222, Verso

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• Art respects the masses, by standing up to them for what they could be, rather than conforming to them in their degraded state.

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, States, Mass

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• The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available.

  Theodor Adorno

  Eye, Glasses, Splinters

  Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.64, Univ of California Press

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• Knowledge, which is power, knows no limits, either in its enslavement of creation or in its deference to worldly masters.

  Theodor Adorno

  Knowledge, Limits, Creation

  Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno (2002). “Dialectic of Enlightenment”, p.2, Stanford University Press

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• It is not the office of art to spotlight alternatives, but to resist by its form alone the course of the world, which permanently puts a pistol to men's heads.

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, Men, Office

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• The power of works of art still continues to be secretly nourished by imitation... kitsch

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, Kitsch, Imitation

  Theodor W. Adorno, Richard D. Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music: Theodor W. Adorno ; Selected, with Introduction, Commentary, and Notes by Richard Leppert ; New Translations by Susan H. Gillespie”, p.364, Univ of California Press

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• The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite.

  Theodor Adorno

  Giving Up, Symbolism, Sound

  Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.352, Univ of California Press

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• 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 Adorno

  Way, Causes, Modern

  Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno (2002). “Dialectic of Enlightenment”, p.3, Stanford University Press

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• Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices.

  Theodor Adorno

  Black And White, Choices, Would Be

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.132, Verso

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• The good man is he who rules himself as he does his own property: his autonomous being is modelled on material power.

  Theodor Adorno

  Men, Good Man, Doe

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.185, Verso

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• Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men.

  Theodor Adorno

  Technology, Men, Gestures

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.40, Verso

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• True thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves.

  Theodor Adorno

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• The basest person is capable of perceiving the weaknesses of the greatest, the most stupid, the errors in the thought of the most intelligent.

  Theodor Adorno

  Stupid, Intelligent, Errors

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.50, Verso

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• Indeed, happiness is nothing other than being encompassed, an after-image of the original shelter within the mother. But for this reason no one who is happy can know that he is so. To see happiness, he would have to pass out of it: to be as if already born. He who says he is happy lies, and in invoking happiness, sins against it. He alone keeps faith who says: I was happy.

  Theodor Adorno

  Mother, Lying, Shelter

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.112, Verso

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