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Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Herbert Marcuse Quotes

“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.”

NeedsIndividualConsciousnessDependsSatisfactionLiberationServitudeEmergence
Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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“At the classical origins of philosophic thought, the transcending concepts remained committed to the prevailing separation between intellectual and manual labor to the established society of enslavement. ... Those who bore the brunt of the untrue reality and who, therefore, seemed to be most in need of attaining its subversion were not the concern of philosophy. It abstracted from them and continued to abstract from them.”

NeedsPhilosophyRealityIntellectualConceptsConcernLaborCommittedSeparationAbstractBoresManualsUntruePrevailingEnslavementTranscendingPhilosophicSubversionManual Labor
Author:Herbert Marcuse
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“It is generally admitted that the cultural values (humanization) and the existing institutions and policies of society are rarely,if ever, in harmony. This opinion has found expression in the distinction between culture and civilization, according to which "culture" refers to some higher dimension of human autonomy and fulfillment, while "civilization" designates the realm of necessity, of socially necessary work and behavior, where man is not really himself and in his own element but is subject to heteronomy, to external conditions and needs.”

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Author:Herbert Marcuse
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“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.”

PeopleMenNeedsFormDangerCapitalismDestructionInstrumentsConsumersCorporateTiesDevicesEnginesCommodityConsumingPossessingGadgetsNature Of Man
Book:An Essay on Liberation
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“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.”

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Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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“If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.”

IfsNeedsMadeEnjoyClassTelevisionDaughterProgramWorkersPopulationSatisfactionEqualityNewspapersBossEstablishmentPreservationResortsEmployersAssimilationDisappearanceCadillacs
Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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“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.”

IfsNeedsDoeChoicesIndividualSocialMastersElectionSlaveWideVarietyGoodsSpontaneousToilAutonomyAlienationAbolishReproductionEfficacyGoods And ServicesFree ChoiceSocial ControlFree Elections
Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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“The organism is thus being preconditioned for the spontaneous acceptance of what is offered. Inasmuch as the greater liberty involves a contraction rather than extension and development of instinctual needs, it works for rather than against the status quo of general repression - one might speak of "institutionalized desublimation". The latter appears to be a vital factor in the making of the authoritarian personality of our time.”

NeedsBodyMightSpeakLibertyGreaterAcceptancePersonalityDevelopmentFactorsOur TimeLatterOrganismsSpontaneousExtensionsStatus QuoRepressionContractions
Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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