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Theodor Adorno

74 quotes

“Both are torn halves of an integral freedom, to which however they do not add up.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On high culture and popular culture, in a letter to Walter Benjamin (18 March 1936)
“Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Authoritarian Personality (1950), p. 976, co-written with Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford
“Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft [Cultural Criticism and Society] (1951); this quote is more famously known in the forms "No poetry after Auschwitz" or "There can be no poetry after Auschwitz." Sometimes a more specific pr…
“When I made my theoretical model, I could not have guessed that people would try to realise it with Molotov cocktails.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Dialectical Imagination : A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research (1973) by M Jay, p. 279.
“Jazz is the false liquidation of art — instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Perennial fashion — Jazz, as quoted in The Sociology of Rock (1978) by Simon Frith
“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 (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Perennial Fashion — Jazz" (1978), Prisms, p. 129, as translated by Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber (1981)
“Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Was bedeutet Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit” (1959)
“Immer von Beckett ist eine technische Reduktion bis zum äußersten. ... Aber diese Reduktion ist ja wirklich das was die Welt aus uns macht ... das heißt die Welt aus uns gemacht diese Stümpfe von Menschen also diese Menschen die eigentlich ihr ich ihr verloren haben die sind wirklich die Produkte der Welt in der wir leben.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda,” The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (1982), p. 123
“In America I was liberated from a certain naïve belief in culture and attained the capacity to see culture from the outside. To clarify the point: in spite of all social criticism and all consciousness of the primacy of economic factors, the fundamental importance of the mind—“Geist”—was quasi a dogma self-evident to me from the very beginning. The fact that this was not a foregone conclusion, I learned in America, where no reverential silence in the presence of everything intellectual prevailed.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as quoted in The Origin of Negative Dialectics (Free Press: 1977), p. 187
“We are really no longer ourselves a part of nature at the moment when we notice, when we recognize, that we are a part of nature.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Probleme der Moralphilosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996), p. 154; as quoted in Andrew Bowie, Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), p. 94
“Music for entertainment ... seems to complement the reduction of people to silence, the dying out of speech as expression, the inability to communicate at all. It inhabits the pockets of silence that develop between people molded by anxiety, work and undemanding docility.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Impulse, subjectivity and profanation, the old adversaries of materialistic alienation, now succumb to it. ... The representatives of the opposition to the authoritarian schema become witnesses to the authority of commercial success. ... In the service of success they renounce that insubordinate character which was theirs.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be sure, exchange-value exerts its power in a special way in the realm of cultural goods. For in the world of commodities this realm appears to be exempted from the power of exchange, to be in an immediate relationship with the goods, and it is this appearance in turn which alone gives cultural goods their exchange-value. But they nevertheless simultaneously fall completely into the world of commodities, are produced for the market, and are aimed at the market.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The dressing up and puffing up of the individual erases the lineaments of protest.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It suffices to remember how many sorrows he is spared who no longer thinks too many thoughts, how much more "in accordance with reality" a person behaves when he affirms that the real is the right, how much more capacity to use the machinery falls to the person who integrates himself with it uncomplainingly.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even the most insensitive hit song enthusiast cannot always escape the feeling that the child with a sweet tooth comes to know in the candy store.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Regressive listeners behave like children. Again and again and with stubborn malice, they demand the one dish they have once been served.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Max Horkheimer
“The blessing that the market does not ask about birth is paid for in the exchange society by the fact that the possibilities conferred by birth are molded to fit the production of goods that can be bought on the market.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Max Horkheimer
“The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Max Horkheimer
“Furchtbares hat die Menschheit sich antun müssen, bis das Selbst, der identische, zweckgerichtete, männliche Charakter des Menschen geschaffen war, und etwas davon wird noch in jeder Kindheit wiederholt.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Die traurige Wissenschaft, aus der ich meinem Freunde einiges darbiete, bezieht sich auf einen Bereich, der für undenkliche Zeiten als der eigentliche der Philosophie galt, seit deren Verwandlung in Methode aber der intellektuellen Nichtachtung, der sententiösen Willkür und am Ende der Vergessenheit verfiel: die Lehre vom richtigen Leben. Was einmal den Philosophen Leben hieß, ist zur Sphäre des Privaten und dann bloß noch des Konsums geworden, die als Anhang des materiellen Produktionsprozesses, ohne Autonomie und ohne eigene Substanz, mit geschleift wird.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), Dedication
“Der Bürger aber ist tolerant. Seine Liebe zu den Leuten, wie sie sind, entspringt dem Haß gegen den richtigen Menschen.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 4
“Die Glorifizierung der prächtigen underdogs läuft auf die des prächtigen Systems heraus, das sie dazu macht.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 7
“Marriage as a community of interests unfailingly means the degradation of the interested parties, and it is the perfidy of the world's arrangements that no one, even if aware of it, can escape such degradation. The idea might therefore be entertained that marriage without ignominy is a possibility reserved for those spared the pursuit of interests, for the rich. But the possibility is purely formal, for the privileged are precisely those in whom the pursuit of interests has become second-nature—they would not otherwise uphold privilege.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 10
“Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 18
“Zartheit zwischen Menschen ist nichts anderes als das Bewußtsein von der Möglichkeit zweckfreier Beziehungen.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 20
“Nun gilt für die kürzeste Verbindung zwischen zwei Personen die Gerade, so als ob sie Punkte wären.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 20
“Die fast unlösbare Aufgabe besteht darin, weder von der Macht der anderen, noch von der eigenen Ohnmacht sich dumm machen zu lassen.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 34
“Der vage Ausdruck erlaubt dem, der ihn vernimmt, das ungefähr sich vorzustellen, was ihm genehm ist und was er ohnehin meint. Der strenge erzwingt Eindeutigkeit der Auffassung, die Anstrengung des Begriffs, deren die Menschen bewußt entwöhnt werden, und mutet ihnen vor allem Inhalt Suspension der gängigen Urteile, damit ein sich Absondern zu, dem sie heftig widerstreben. Nur, was sie nicht erst zu verstehen brauchen, gilt ihnen für verständlich; nur das in Wahrheit Entfremdete, das vom Kommerz geprägte Wort berührt sie als vertraut.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 64
“All the world's not a stage.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 94
“Wer will es schließlich selbst den allerfreiesten Geistern verübeln, wenn sie nicht mehr für eine imaginäre Nachwelt schreiben, deren Zutraulichkeit die der Zeitgenossen womöglich noch überbietet, sondern einzig für den toten Gott?”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 133
“Kunst ist Magie, befreit von der Lüge, Wahrheit zu sein.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 143
“The importance of the culture industry in the spiritual constitution of the masses is no dispensation for reflection on its objective legitimation, its essential being, least of all by a science which thinks itself pragmatic.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the products of the culture industry human beings get into trouble only so that they can be rescued unharmed, usually by representatives of a benevolent collective; and then, in illusory harmony, they are reconciled with the general interest whose demands they had initially experienced as irreconcilable with their own.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the general tendency toward specialization, philosophy too has established itself as a specialized discipline, one purified of all specific content. In so doing, philosophy has denied its own constitutive concept: the intellectual freedom that does not obey the dictates of specialized knowledge.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By abstaining from all definite content, whether as formal logic and theory of science or as the legend of Being beyond all beings, philosophy declared its bankruptcy regarding concrete social goals.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Philosophy ... should not imagine that specialized work in epistemological theory, or whatever else prides itself on being research, is actually philosophy. Yet a philosophy forswearing all of that must in the end be irreconcilably at odds with the dominant consciousness. Nothing else raises it above the suspicion of apologetics. Philosophy that satisfies its own intention, and does not childishly skip behind its own history and the real one, has its lifeblood in the resistance against the common practices of today and what they serve, against the justification of what happens to be the case.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Traditional philosophy's claim to totality, culminating in the thesis that the real is rational, is indistinguishable from apologetics.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Philosophy ... must not bargain away anything of the emphatic concept of truth.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The more reified the world becomes, the thicker the veil cast upon nature, the more the thinking weaving that veil in its turn claims ideologically to be nature, primordial experience.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In both positivism and Heidegger—at least in his later work—speculation is the target of attack. In both cases the thought that autonomously raises itself above the facts through interpreting them and that cannot be reclaimed by them without leaving a surplus is condemned for being empty and vain concept-mongering.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Falsch am Positivismus ist, daß er die nun einmal gegebene Arbeitsteilung, die der Wissenschaften von der gesellschaftlichen Praxis und die innerhalb der Wissenschaft, als Maß des Wahren supponiert und keine Theorie erlaubt, welche die Arbeitsteilung selbst als abgeleitet, vermittelt durchsichtig machen, ihrer falschen Autorität entkleiden könnte.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a world that has been thoroughly permeated by the structures of the social order, a world that so overpowers every individual that scarcely any option remains but to accept it on its own terms, such naiveté reproduces itself incessantly and disastrously. What people have forced upon them by a boundless apparatus, which they themselves constitute and which they are locked into, virtually eliminates all natural elements and becomes “nature” to them.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Die Berufung auf Wissenschaft, auf ihre Spielregeln, auf die Alleingültigkeit der Methoden, zu denen sie sich entwickelte, ist zur Kontrollinstanz geworden, die den freien, ungegängelten, nicht schon dressierten Gedanken ahndet und vom Geist nichts duldet als das methodologisch Approbierte. Wissenscahaft,das Medium von Autonomie, ist in einen Apparat der Heteronomie ausgeartet.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sie möchte formal und material ebenjener Gestalt geistiger Freiheit helfen, die in den herrschenden philosophischen Richtungen keine Stel1e hat.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Denken, das offen, konsequent und auf dem Stand vorwärtsgetriebener Erkenntnis den Objekten sich zuwendet, ist diesen gegenüber frei auch derart, daß es sich nicht vom organisierten Wissen Regeln vorschreiben läßt. Es kehrt den Inbegriff der in ihm akkumulierten Erfahrung den Gegenständen zu, zerreißt das gesel1schaftliche Gespinst, das sie verbirgt, und gewahrt sie neu.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The jargon of authenticity ... is a trademark of societalized chosenness, ... sub-language as superior language.”
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source