Theodor Adorno Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Theodor Adorno

  Animal, Thinking, Holocaust

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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 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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• Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.

  Theodor Adorno

  Personality, Tolerance, Mark

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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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• There is no true life within a false life.

  Theodor Adorno

  True Life

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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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• People know what they want because they know what other people want.

  Theodor Adorno

  People, Want, Knows

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

  Theodor Adorno

  Mean, Comeback, Insult

  "Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life".

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• He who integrates is lost.

  Theodor Adorno

  Integrating, Lost

  Theodor Adorno (2002). “The Stars Down to Earth”, p.174, Routledge

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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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• Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.

  Theodor Adorno

  Emotional, Democracy, Source

  Theodor W. Adorno, Samuel H. Flowerman (1964). “The Authoritarian Personality: Studies in Prejudice”

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• Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.

  Theodor Adorno

  Life, Life Changing, Wrong Life

  Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.36, Univ of California Press

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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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• 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

  Mean, Reflection, Self

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

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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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• Happiness is obsolete: uneconomic.

  Theodor Adorno

  Obsolete

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.217, 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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• In the innermost recesses of humanism, as its very soul, there rages a frantic prisoner who, as a Fascist, turns the world into a prison.

  Theodor Adorno

  Soul, World, Prison

  Theodor W. Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann (2003). “Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader”, p.53, Stanford University Press

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• A German is someone who cannot tell a lie without believing it himself.

  Theodor Adorno

  Lying, Believe

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.110, Verso

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• Advice to intellectuals: let no-one represent you.

  Theodor Adorno

  Advice

  Theodor W. Adorno (1978). “Minima Moralia”, p.128, Verso

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• When all actions are mathematically calculated, they also take on a stupid quality.

  Theodor Adorno

  Stupid, Risk, Quality

  Theodor W. Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann (2003). “Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader”, p.58, Stanford University Press

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