Max Horkheimer Quotes

Quotes about:

Belief Fate Philosophy Physics Pragmatism Reality

The Revolution won't happen with guns, rather it will happen incrementally, year by year, generation by generation. We will gradually infiltrate their educational institutions and their political offices, transforming them slowly into Marxist entities as we move towards universal egalitarianism.

Max Horkheimer

Education, Philosophy, Moving

109 Copy quote
Whoever is not prepared to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism.

Max Horkheimer

Political, Silence, Silent

86 Copy quote
The more the concept of reason becomes emasculated, the more easily it lends itself to ideological manipulation and to propagation of even the most blatant lies. ... Subjective reason conforms to anything.

Max Horkheimer

Lying, Manipulation, Reason

Max Horkheimer (2004). “EPZ Eclipse of Reason”, p.17, A&C Black

35 Copy quote
A revolutionary career does not lead to banquets and honorary titles, interesting research and professorial wages. It leads to misery, disgrace, ingratitude, prison and a voyage into the unknown, illuminated by only an almost superhuman belief.

Max Horkheimer

Careers, Interesting, Doe

61 Copy quote
Reason as an organ for perceiving the true nature of reality and determining the guiding principles of our lives has come to be regarded as obsolete.

Max Horkheimer

Reality, Guiding Principles, Reason

Max Horkheimer (2013). “Eclipse of Reason”, p.11, A&C Black

22 Copy quote
Whoever desires to live among men has to obey their laws this is what the secular morality of Western civilization comes down to. ... Rationality in the form of such obedience swallows up everything, even the freedom to think.

Max Horkheimer

Men, Thinking, Law

Max Horkheimer (1970). “Zeitschrift Fur Sozialforschung”

5 Copy quote
Once the philosophical foundation of democracy has collapsed, the statement that dictatorship is bad is rationally valid only for those who are not its beneficiaries, and there is no theoretical obstacle to the transformation of this statement into its opposite.

Max Horkheimer

Philosophical, Democracies Have, Opposites

Max Horkheimer (2013). “Eclipse of Reason”, p.19, A&C Black

19 Copy quote
When even the dictators of today appeal to reason, they mean that they possess the most tanks. They were rational enough to build them; others should be rational enough to yield to them.

Max Horkheimer

Mean, Yield, Today

"The Essential Frankfurt School Reader" by Max Horkheimer, (p. 28), 1982.

29 Copy quote
Philosophy is overwhelmingly complicated, its procedure depressingly slow.

Max Horkheimer

Philosophy, Complicated, Procedures

24 Copy quote
When the great religious and philosophical conceptions were alive, thinking people did not extol humility and brotherly love, justice and humanity because it was realistic to maintain such principles and odd and dangerous to deviate from them, or because these maxims were more in harmony with their supposedly free tastes than others. They held to such ideas because they saw in them elements of truth, because they connected them with the idea of logos, whether in the form of God or of a transcendental mind, or even of nature as an eternal principle.

Max Horkheimer

Religious, Philosophical, Humility

"Eclipse of Reason" by Max Horkheimer, (p. 34), 1947.

37 Copy quote
The world is so possessed by the power of what is and the efforts of adjustment to it, that the adolescent's rebellion, which once fought the father because his practices contradicted his own ideology, can no longer crop up. ... Psychologically, the father is ... replaced by the world of things.

Max Horkheimer

Father, Practice, Effort

"The Essential Frankfurt School Reader" by Max Horkheimer, (pp. 41-42), 1982.

19 Copy quote
The facts which our senses present to us are socially performed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving organ. Both are not simply natural; they are shaped by human activity, and yet the individual perceives himself as receptive and passive in the act of perception.

Max Horkheimer

Character, Two, Historical

Max Horkheimer (1972). “Critical Theory: Selected Essays”, p.200, A&C Black

29 Copy quote
As soon as a thought or word becomes a tool, one can dispense with actually 'thinking' it, that is, with going through the logical acts involved in verbal formulation of it. As has been pointed out, often and correctly, the advantage of mathematics - the model of all neo-positivistic thinking - lies in just this 'intellectual economy.' Complicated logical operations are carried out without actual performance of the intellectual acts upon which the mathematical and logical symbols are based. ... Reason ... becomes a fetish, a magic entity that is accepted rather than intellectually experienced.

Max Horkheimer

Lying, Thinking, Intellectual

"Eclipse of Reason" by Max Horkheimer, (pp. 24-25), 1947.

19 Copy quote
The quality of the human that precludes identifying the individual with the class is 'metaphysical' and has no place in empiricist epistemology. The pigeon hole into which a man is shoved circumscribes his fate.

Max Horkheimer

Fate, Men, Class

"Eclipse of Reason" by Max Horkheimer, (p. 23), 1947.

13 Copy quote
With the abolition of otium and of the ego no aloof thinking is left. ... Without otium philosophical thought is impossible, cannot be conceived or understood.

Max Horkheimer

Philosophical, Thinking, Ego

Max Horkheimer (1970). “Zeitschrift Fur Sozialforschung”

13 Copy quote
In most cases, to be reasonable means not to be obstinate, which in turn points to conformity with reality as it is. The principle of adjustment is taken for granted. When the idea of reason was conceived, it was intended to achieve more than the mere regulation of the relation between means and ends: it was regarded as the instrument for understanding the ends, for determining them.

Max Horkheimer

Taken, Mean, Reality

Max Horkheimer (2013). “Eclipse of Reason”, p.8, Read Books Ltd

28 Copy quote
Reason has never really directed social reality, but now reason has been so thoroughly purged of any specific trend or preference that it has finally renounced even the task of passing judgment on man's actions and way of life. Reason has turned them over for ultimate sanction to the conflicting interests to which our world actually seems abandoned.

Max Horkheimer

Reality, Men, Our World

Max Horkheimer (2013). “Eclipse of Reason”, p.5, A&C Black

4 Copy quote
Pragmatism , in trying to turn experimental physics into a prototype of all science and to model all spheres of intellectual life after the techniques of the laboratory, is the counterpart of modern industrialism, for which the factory is the prototype of human existence, and which models all branches of culture after production on the conveyor belt.

Max Horkheimer

Intellectual, Trying, Culture

Max Horkheimer (2004). “EPZ Eclipse of Reason”, p.35, A&C Black

20 Copy quote
The complexity of the connection between the world of perception and the world of physics does not preclude that such a connection can be shown to exist at any time.

Max Horkheimer

Perception, World, Connections

Max Horkheimer (1972). “Critical Theory: Selected Essays”, p.133, A&C Black

9 Copy quote
In the face of the idea that truth might afford the opposite of satisfaction and turn out to be completely shocking to humanity at any given historical moment, ... the fathers of pragmatism made the satisfaction of the subject the criterion of truth. For such a doctrine there is no possibility of rejecting or even criticizing any species of belief that is enjoyed by its adherents.

Max Horkheimer

Father, Opposites, Ideas

Max Horkheimer (2013). “Eclipse of Reason”, p.35, A&C Black

20 Copy quote
If the subjectivist view hold true, thinking cannot be of any help in determining the desirability of any goal in itself. The acceptability of ideals, the criteria for our actions and beliefs, the leading principles of ethics and politics, all our ultimate decisions are made to depend upon factors other than reason. They are supposed to be matters of choice and predilection, and it has become meaningless to speak of truth in making practical, moral or esthetic decisions.

Max Horkheimer

Thinking, Views, Goal

"Eclipse of Reason" by Max Horkheimer, (pp. 7-8), 1947.

11 Copy quote
The pleasure a man gets from a landscape would [not] last long if he were convinced a priori that the forms and colors he sees are just forms and colors, that all structures in which they play a role are purely subjective and have no relation whatsoever to any meaningful order or totality, that they simply and necessarily express nothing....No walk through the landscape is necessary any longer; and thus the very concept of landscape as experienced by a pedestrian becomes meaningless and arbitrary. Landscape deteriorates altogether into landscaping.

Max Horkheimer

Meaningful, Men, Order

19 Copy quote
Spinoza , for example, thought that insight into the essence of reality, into the harmonious structure of the eternal universe, necessarily awakens love for this universe. For him, ethical conduct is entirely determined by such insight into nature, just as our devotion to a person may be determined by insight into his greatness or genius. Fears and petty passions, alien to the great love of the universe, which is logos itself, will vanish, according to Spinoza, once our understanding of reality is deep enough.

Max Horkheimer

Passion, Reality, Greatness

Max Horkheimer (2013). “Eclipse of Reason”, p.9, A&C Black

6 Copy quote
Pragmatism ... reflects with almost disarming candor the spirit of the prevailing business culture, the very same attitude of 'being practical' as counter to which philosophical meditation as such was conceived.

Max Horkheimer

Attitude, Philosophical, Meditation

Max Horkheimer (2013). “Eclipse of Reason”, p.35, A&C Black

13 Copy quote
The disparagement of empirical evidence in favor of a metaphysical world of illusion has its origin in the conflicy between the emancipated individual of bourgeois society and his fate within that society.

Max Horkheimer

Fate, World, Favors

Max Horkheimer (1972). “Critical Theory: Selected Essays”, p.138, A&C Black

12 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Herbert Marcuse

Jurgen Habermas

Walter Benjamin

Karl Marx

Max Weber

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Max Horkheimer

Follow

Born: February 14, 1895
Died: July 7, 1973
Occupation: Philosopher
Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics