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

  Theodor Adorno

  Animal, Thinking, Holocaust

  77 Copy quote

• 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

  53 Copy quote

• 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

  45 Copy quote

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

  Theodor Adorno

  Advice

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

  29 Copy quote

• 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

  27 Copy quote

• For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.

  Theodor Adorno

  Writing, Men, Emigration

  Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.61, Univ of California Press

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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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• 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

  26 Copy quote

• 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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• All the world's not a stage.

  Theodor Adorno

  World, Stage

  "Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life". Book by Theodor W. Adorno, 1951.

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• Once the last trace of emotion has been eradicated, nothing remains of thought but absolute tautology.

  Theodor Adorno

  Lasts, Emotion, Tautology

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.123, 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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• The Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.

  Theodor Adorno

  Men, Earth, Enlightened

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• To hate destructiveness, one must hate life as well: only death is an image of undistorted life ... organic life is an illness peculiar to our unlovely planet.

  Theodor Adorno

  Life, Hate, Peculiar

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.78, Verso

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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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• Life has changed into a timeless succession of shocks, interspaced with empty, paralysed intervals.

  Theodor Adorno

  Life, Empty, Timeless

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.54, Verso

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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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• But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain.

  Theodor Adorno

  Life, Despair, Vain

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.167, Verso

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