Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Herbert Marcuse

145 quotes

“Bourgeois political economy … never gets to see man who is its real subject. It disregards the essence of man and his history and is thus in the profoundest sense not a ‘science of people’ but of non-people and of an inhuman world of objects and commodities.”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Foundations of Historical Materialism,” Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 9
“In conditions of private property … “life-activity” stands in the service of property instead of property standing the service of free life-activity.”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Foundations of Historical Materialism," Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 32
“Reason and Revolution, Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, Herbert Marcuse, London Routledge & Kegan Paul LTD 2nd edition 1941, reprinted 1955”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We hope that the analysis offered here will demonstrate that Hegel’s basic concepts are hostile to the tendencies that have led into Fascist theory and practice. Preface”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As the German idealists saw it, the French Revolution not only abolished feudal absolutism, replacing it with the economic and political system of the middle class, but it completed what the German Reformation had begun, emancipating the individual as a self-reliant master of his life. p. 3”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man is a thinking being. His reason enables him to recognize his own potentialities and those of his world. He is thus not at the mercy of the facts that surround him, but is capable of subjecting them to a higher standard, that of reason. P. 6”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man alone has the power of self-realization, the power to be a self-determining subject in all processes of becoming, for he alone has an understanding of potentialities and a knowledge of ‘notions.’ His very existence is the process of actualizing his potentialities, of molding his life according to the notions of reason. P. 9”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“German idealism rescued philosophy from the attack of British empiricism, and the struggle between the two became not merely a clash of different philosophical school, but a struggle for philosophy as such. P. 16”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hegel’s theological discussion repeatedly asks what the true relation is between the individual man and a state that no longer satisfies his capacities but exists rather as an ‘estranged’ institution from which the active political interest of the citizens has disappeared. Hegel defined this state with almost the same categories as those of eighteenth century liberalism: the state rests on the consent of the individuals, it circumscribes their rights and duties and protects its members from those internal and external dangers that might threaten the perpetuation of the whole. P. 32”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The notion contradicts reality when the latter has become self-contradictory. Hegel says that a prevailing social form can be successfully attacked by thought only if this form has come into open contradiction with its own ‘truth,’ in other words, if it can no longer fulfill the demands of its own contents. P. 51”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Kantian philosophy left a gulf between thought and being, or between subject and object, which the Hegelian philosophy sought to bridge. The bridge was to be made by positing one universal structure of all being. Being was to be a process wherein a thing ‘comprehends’ or ‘grasps’ the various states of existence and draws them into the more or less enduring unity of its ‘self,’ thus actively constituting itself as ‘the same’ throughout all change. Everything, in other words, exists more or less as a ‘subject.’ P. 64”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The concept of labor is not peripheral in Hegel’s system, but is the central notion through which he conceives the development of society. Driven by the insight that opened this dimension to him, Hegel describes the mode of integration prevailing in a commodity-producing society in terms that clearly fore-shadow Marx’s critical approach. P. 78”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The historical world, in so far as it is built, organized, and shaped by the conscious activity of thinking subjects, is a realm of mind. But the mind is fully realized and exists in its true form only when it indulges in its proper activity, namely, in art, religion, and philosophy. P. 87”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Preface to the Phenomenology is one of the greatest philosophical undertakings of all times, constituting no less an attempts than to reinstate philosophy as the highest form of human knowledge, as ‘the Science.’ P. 97”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Understanding finds nothing but itself when it seeks the essence behind the appearance of things. ‘It is manifest that behind the so-called curtain, which is to hide the inner world, there is nothing to be seen unless we ourselves go behind there, as much in order that we may thereby see, as that there may be something behind there which can be seen.’ P. 111”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being is continuous becoming. P. 136”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The real field of knowledge is not the given fact about things as they are, but the critical evaluation of them as a prelude to passing beyond their given form. Knowledge deals with appearances in order to get beyond them. …. The concept of reality has thus turned into the concept of possibility. The real is not yet ‘actual,’ but is at first only the possibility of an actual. P. 145”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have reached the point where the Objective Logic turns into the Subjective Logic, or, where subjectivity emerges as the true form of objectivity. We may sum up Hegel’s analysis in the following schema: The true form of reality requires freedom. Freedom requires self-consciousness and knowledge of the truth. Self-consciousness and knowledge of the truth are the essentials of the subject. The form of reality must be conceived as subject. P. 154-155”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The will is a unity of two different aspects or moments: first, the individual’s ability to abstract from every specific condition and, by negating it, to return to the absolute liberty of the pure ego; secondly, the individual’s act of freely adopting a concrete condition, freely affirming his existence as a particular, limited ego. P. 185”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fault with Hegel lies much deeper than in his glorification of the Prussian monarchy. He is guilty not so much of being servile as of betraying his highest philosophical ideas. His political doctrine surrenders society to nature, freedom to necessity, reason to caprice. And in so doing, it mirrors the destiny of the social order that falls, while in pursuit of its freedom, into a state of nature far below reason. P. 218”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The concept of freedom, as the Philosophy of Right has shown, follows the pattern of free ownership. As a result, the history of the world that Hegel looks out upon exalts and enshrines the history of the middle-class, which based itself on this pattern. There is a stark truth in Hegel’s strangely certain announcement that history has reached its end. But it announces the funeral of a class, not of history. P. 227”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The transition from philosophy to the domain of state and society had been an intrinsic part of Hegel’s system. P. 251”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The transition from Hegel to Marx is, in all respects, a transition to an essentially different order of truth, no to be interpreted in terms of philosophy. We shall see that all the philosophical concepts of Marxian theory are social and economic categories, whereas Hegel’s social and economic categories are all philosophical concepts. P. 258”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Kierkegaard’s individualistic interpretation of ‘the negation of philosophy’ inevitably developed a fierce opposition to Western rationalism. …. According to Kierkegaard, the individual is not the knowing but only the ‘ethically existing subjectivity.’ The sole reality that matters to him is his own ‘ethical existence’. P. 263-264”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marx explains the alienation of labor as exemplified in, first, the relation of the worker to the product of his labor and, second, the relation of the worker to his own activity. P. 276”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hegel’s philosophy revolved about the universality of reason; it was a rational system with its every part (the subjective as well as the objective spheres) integrated into a comprehensive whole. Marx shows that capitalist society first put such a universality into practice. P. 286-287”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The guiding question of Marx’s analysis was, How does capitalist society supply its members with the necessary use-values? And the answer disclosed a process of blind necessity, chance, anarchy and frustration. The introduction of the category of use-value was the introduction of a forgotten factor, forgotten, that is, by the classical political economy which was occupied only with the phenomenon of exchange value. In the Marxian theory, this factor becomes an instrument that cuts through the mystifying reification of the commodity world. P. 304”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When capitalism is negated, social processes no longer stand under the rule of blind natural laws. P. 318”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Positive philosophy made its counter-attack against critical rationalism on two fronts. Comte fought against the French form of negative philosophy, against the heritage of Descartes and the Enlightenment. In Germany, the struggle was directed against Hegel’s system. Schelling received an express commission from Frederick William IV ‘to destroy the dragon seed’ of Hegelianism, while Stahl, another anti-Hegelian, became the philosophical spokesman of the Prussian monarchy in 1840. P. 326”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Saint-Simon, like Hegel, begins with the assertion that the social order engendered by the French Revolution proved that mankind has reached the adult state. In contrast to Hegel, however, he described this stage primarily in terms of its economy; the industrial process was the sole integrating factor in the new social order. P. 330”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“‘Resignation’ is a keynote in Comte’s writings, deriving directly from assent to invariable social laws. ‘True resignation, that is, a disposition to endure necessary evils steadfastly and without any hope of compensation therefore, can result only from a profound feeling for the invariable laws that govern the variety of natural phenomena. P. 345”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The revolution, Stahl declared, is the ‘world-historic mark of our age.’ It would found ‘the entire State on the will of man instead of on the commandment and ordinance of God.’ p. 364”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sociology does not ‘negate’ philosophy, in the sense of taking over the hidden content of philosophy and carrying it into social theory and practice, but sets itself up as a realm apart from philosophy, with a province and truth of its own. Comte is rightly held to be the inaugurator of this separation between philosophy and sociology. P. 375”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Loren von Stein thus turned the dialectic into an ensemble of objective laws calling for social reform as the adequate solution of all contradictions and neutralized the critical elements of the dialectic. P. 388”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ever since the first World War, when the system of liberalism began to shape into the system of authoritarianism, a widespread opinion has blames Hegelianism for the ideological of the new system. P. 390”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To those who hold abstractly to Hegel’s political philosophy, Hobhouse replies that the very fact of class society, the patent influence of class interests on the state, renders it impossible to designate the state as expressive of the real will of individuals as a whole. ‘Wherever a community is governed by one class or one race, the remaining class or race is permanently in the position of having to take what it can get.’ P. 396”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gentile himself call his doctrine ‘absolute formalism’: there is no; ’matter’ apart from the pure ‘form’ of acting. ‘The only matter there is in the spiritual act is the form itself, as activity.’ P. 407”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hegel’s philosophy was an integral part of the culture which authoritarianism had to overcome. It is therefore no accident that the National Socialist assault on Hegel begins with the repudiation of his political theory. P. 411”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The total victimization of the individual that takes place is encouraged for the specific benefit of the industrial and political bureaucracy. It therefore cannot be justified on the ground of the individual’s true interest. National Socialist ideology simply states that true human existence consists in unconditional sacrifice, that it is of the essence of the individual’s life to abbey and to serve-‘service which never comes to an end because service and life coincide.’ P. 416”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The social and political theory responsible for the development of Fascist Germany was, then, related to Hegelianism in a completely negative way. P. 418”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By virtue of the way it has organized its technological base, contemporary industrial society tends to be totalitarian. For "totalitarian" is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic-technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests.”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the need for stupefying work where it is no longer a real necessity.”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appeals to be the very embodiment of Reason.”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The capabilities (intellectual and material) of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than ever before—which means that the scope of society's domination over the individual is immeasurably greater than ever before. Our society distinguishes itself by conquering the centrifugal social forces with Technology rather than Terror, on the dual basis of an overwhelming efficiency and an increasing standard of living.”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living, … underlies all intellectual effort; it is the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself.”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Such abstraction which refuses to accept the given universe of facts as the final context of validation, such “transcending” analysis of the facts in the light of their arrested and denied possibilities, pertains to the very structure of social theory.”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The way in which a society organizes the life of its members … is one “project” of realization among others. But once the project has become operative in the basic institutions and relations, it tends to become exclusive and to determine the development of the society as a whole.”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude, and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions which, to a great extent, have become the individual's own.”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual.”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source