Theodor Adorno Quotes - Page 3

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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 creed of evil has been, since the beginnings of highly industrialized society, not only a precursor of barbarism but a mask of good. The worth of the latter was transferred to the evil that drew to itself all the hatred and resentment of an order which drummed good into its adherents so that it could with impunity be evil.

  Theodor Adorno

  Order, Evil, Hatred

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.94, Verso

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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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• 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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• There are no more ideologies in the authentic sense of false consciousness, only advertisements for the world through its duplication and the provocative lie which does not seek belief but commands silence.

  Theodor Adorno

  Lying, Silence, Doe

  Theodor W. Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann (2003). “Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader”, p.161, Stanford University Press

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• Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

  Theodor Adorno

  Life, Absence, Ideology

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• In organized groups such as the army or the Church there is either no mention of love whatsoever between the members, or it is expressed only in a sublimated and indirect way, through the mediation of some religious imagine in the love of whom the members unite and whose all-embracing love they are supposed to imitate in their attitude towards each other. 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 Adorno

  Religious, Attitude, Army

  "Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda". "The Essential Frankfurt School Reader", 1982.

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• There is no true life within a false life.

  Theodor Adorno

  True Life

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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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• If philosophy is still necessary, it is so only in the way it has been from time immemorial: as critique, as resistance to the expanding heteronomy, even if only as thought's powerless attempt to remain its own master and to convict of untruth, by their own criteria, both a fabricated mythology and a conniving, resigned acquiescence.

  Theodor Adorno

  Philosophy, Acquiescence, Way

  Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.22, Univ of California Press

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• The invocation of science, of its ground rules, of the exclusive validity of the methods that science has now completely become, now constitutes a surveillance authority punishing free, uncoddled, undisciplined thought and tolerating nothing of mental activity other than what has been methodologically sanctioned. Science and scholarship, the medium of autonomy, has degenerated into an instrument of heteronomy.

  Theodor Adorno

  Surveillance, Authority, Undisciplined

  "Wozu noch Philosophie? (Why still philosophy?)". Paper by Theodor Adorno, 1963.

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• Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.

  Theodor Adorno

  Writing, Poetry, Auschwitz

  Theodor W. Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann (2003). “Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader”, p.15, Stanford University Press

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• It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies.

  Theodor Adorno

  Lying, Thinking, Ideas

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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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• The positive element of kitsch lies in the fact that it sets free for a moment the glimmering realization that you have wasted your life.

  Theodor Adorno

  Lying, Elements, Realization

  Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.363, Univ of California Press

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• The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.

  Theodor Adorno

  Tasks, Powerlessness

  Theodor W. Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann (2003). “Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader”, p.47, Stanford University Press

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• In psycho-analysis nothing is true except the exaggerations.

  Theodor Adorno

  Analysis, Psycho, Exaggeration

  1966 Negative Dialectics.

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

  Theodor Adorno

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• Of the world as it exists, it is not possible to be enough afraid.

  Theodor Adorno

  World, Enough

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• He who matures early lives in anticipation.

  Theodor Adorno

  Anticipation, Early Life

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.161, Verso

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• Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people.

  Theodor Adorno

  Distance, People, Elimination

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.41, Verso

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• Very evil people cannot really be imagined dying.

  Theodor Adorno

  Evil People, People, Evil

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.190, Verso

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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 bourgeois ... is tolerant. His love for people as they are stems from his hatred of what they might be.

  Theodor Adorno

  People, Hatred, Might

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

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• The need to let suffering speak is a condition of all truth. For suffering is objectivity that weighs upon the subject

  Theodor Adorno

  Objectivity, Suffering, Needs

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