Theodor Adorno Quotes - Page 2

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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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• He who has laughter on his side has no need of proof.

  Theodor Adorno

  Happiness, Laughter, Joy

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.210, Verso

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• The hardest hit, as everywhere, are those who have no choice.

  Theodor Adorno

  Choices, Hardest Hit, Hardest

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.39, Verso

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• Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

  Theodor Adorno

  Life, Absence, Ideology

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• Art as a whole is a riddle. Another way of putting this is to say that art expresses something while at the same time hiding it.

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, Poetry, Way

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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 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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• People at the top are closing ranks so tightly that all possibility of subjective deviation has gone, and difference can be sought only in the more distinguished cut of an evening dress.

  Theodor Adorno

  Cutting, Differences, People

  Theodor W. Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann (2003). “Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader”, p.77, Stanford University Press

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• Dissonance is the truth about harmony.

  Theodor Adorno

  Harmony, Dissonance

  Theodor W. Adorno (2013). “Aesthetic Theory”, p.151, A&C Black

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• What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.

  Theodor Adorno

  Culture, West, Utopia

  Theodor W. Adorno (1982). “Prisms”, p.72, MIT Press

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• Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, Crime, Uncommitted

  Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.41, 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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• In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.

  Theodor Adorno

  Underdog, Splendid, Ends

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.28, Verso

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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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• The poor are prevented from thinking by the discipline of others, the rich by their own.

  Theodor Adorno

  Thinking, Discipline, Rich

  Theodor W. Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann (2003). “Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader”, p.76, Stanford University 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 phrase, the world wants to be deceived, has become truer than had ever been intended. People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them. They force their eyes shut and voice approval, in a kind of self-loathing, for what is meted out to them, knowing fully the purpose for which it is manufactured. Without admitting it they sense that their lives would be completely intolerable as soon as they no longer clung to satisfactions which are none at all.

  Theodor Adorno

  Fall, Eye, Self

  Theodor W Adorno (2005). “The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture”, p.103, Routledge

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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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• 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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• 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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• The culture industry not so much adapts to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them.

  Theodor Adorno

  Stupidity, Culture, Reactions

  Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.46, Univ of California Press

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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