Herbert Marcuse Quotes

Quotes about:

• The truth of art lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality to define what is real.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Art, Real, Lying

  Herbert Marcuse (1979). “The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics”, p.9, Beacon Press

  92 Copy quote

• Most people are afraid of freedom. They are conditioned to be afraid of it.

  Herbert Marcuse

  People

  63 Copy quote

• The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Men, Ties, People

  Herbert Marcuse (1969). “An Essay on Liberation”, Boston : Beacon Press

  93 Copy quote

• Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of the men and women who could change the world.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Art, Men, World

  Herbert Marcuse (1978). “The aesthetic dimension: toward a critique of Marxist aesthetics”, Beacon Pr

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• Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Powerful, Liberty, Made

  Herbert Marcuse (1964). “One dimensional man: studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society”

  84 Copy quote

• Those who devote their lives to earning a living are incapable of living a human existence.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Earning, Existence, Humans

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.134, Routledge

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• The means of communication, the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers to the producers and, through the latter to the whole social system. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood...Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Attitude, Communication, Mean

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• Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Mean, Tolerance, Movement

  Herbert Marcuse (2007). “The Essential Marcuse: Selected Writings of Philosopher and Social Critic Herbert Marcuse”, p.50, Beacon Press

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• Thought that accepts reality as given is no thought at all.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Reality, Ontology, Logic

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• The sickness of the individual is ultimately caused by and sustained by the sickness of his civilization

  Herbert Marcuse

  Love, Life, Family

  Herbert Marcuse (2015). “Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud”, p.245, Beacon Press

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• One-dimensional thought is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and their purveyors of mass information. Their universe of discourse is populated by self-validating hypotheses which, incessantly and monopolistically repeated, become hyponotic definitions of dictations.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Self, Definitions, Information

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.16, Routledge

  56 Copy quote

• There is no free society without silence, without the internal and external spaces of solitude in which the individual freedom can develop.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Space, Silence, Solitude

  Herbert Marcuse (2004). “The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse”, p.117, Routledge

  56 Copy quote

• Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear – that is, if they sustain alienation. And the spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the controls.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Choices, Toil, Doe

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.10, Routledge

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• The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Home, People, Soul

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.11, Routledge

  42 Copy quote

• Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Historical, Doe, Election

  One-Dimensional Man ch. 1 (1964)

  49 Copy quote

• One will only be free when one plays and one's society will become a piece of art.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Art, Play, Pieces

  9 Copy quote

• Entertainment and learning are not opposites; entertainment may be the most effective mode of learning.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Opposites, May, Entertainment

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.107, Routledge

  46 Copy quote

• Art breaks open a dimension inaccessible to other experience, a dimension in which human beings, nature, and things no longer stand under the law of the established reality principle...The encounter with the truth of art happens in the estranging language and images which make perceptible, visible, and audible that which is no longer, or not yet, perceived, said, and heard in everyday life.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Art, Reality, Law

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• The spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the control.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Philosophy, Doe, Needs

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.10, Routledge

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• Preaching nonviolence on principle reproduces the existing institutionalized violence.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Principles, Violence, Preaching

  Herbert Marcuse (2004). “The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse”, p.62, Routledge

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• The web of domination has become the web of Reason itself, and this society is fatally entangled in it.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Reason, This Society, Domination

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.172, Routledge

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• The intellectual is called on the carpet... Don't you conceal something? You talk a language which is suspect. You don't talk like the rest of us, like the man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your tricks, purge you.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Cutting, Men, Intellectual

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.196, Routledge

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• Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Girlfriend, Problem, Capitalist

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• The neo-conservative critics of leftist critics of mass culture ridicule the protest against Bach as background music in the kitchen, against Plato and Hegel, Shelley and Baudelaire, Marx and Freud in the drugstore. Instead, they insist on recognition of the fact that the classics have left the mausoleum and come to life again, that people are just so much more educated. True, but coming to life as classics, they come to life as other than themselves; they are deprived of their antagonistic force, of the estrangement which was the very dimension of their truth.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Plato, Mass Culture, People

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.67, Routledge

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• [Art] can speak its own language only as long as the images are alive which refuse and refute the established order.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Art, Order, Long

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.65, Routledge

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