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Theodor Adorno

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Sociologist

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Famous Theodor Adorno Quotes

“As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities.”

PeopleDoneTodayForceCommonSuccessfulGreaterMoralityAuthorityMassMythIdeologyRulersCunningDeceivedMisplacedCaptivated
Author:Theodor Adorno
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“Thought as such… is an act of negation, of resistance to that which is forced upon it; this is what thought has inherited from its archetype, the relation between labor and material. Today, when ideologues tend more than ever to encourage thought to be positive, they cleverly note that positivity runs precisely counter to thought, and that it takes friendly persuasion by social authority to accustom thought to positivity.”

RunningTodaySocialMaterialsAuthorityLaborRelationNotesPositivityResistanceFriendlyPersuasionBeing PositiveArchetypeNegationIdeologues
Book:Negative Dialectics
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“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.”

GivingMomentsSoundMysteryShareBandGiving UpAimJazzAcceptedMasculinitySymbolismReproductionRiteImpotenceFraternityInitiationJazz BandCastration
Book:Essays on Music
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“The body's habituation to walking as normal stems from the good olddays. It was the bourgeois form of locomotion: physicaldemythologization, free of the spell of hieratic pacing, rooflesswandering, breathless flight. Human dignity insisted on the right towalk, a rhythm not extorted from the body by command or terror. Thewalk, the stroll, were private ways of passing time, the heritage ofthe feudal promenade in the nineteenth century.”

WayHumansBodyFormCenturyWalkingNormalDignityTerrorPassingPassingsCommandFlightRhythmSpellsHeritageStemBourgeoisNineteenth CenturyHuman DignityBreathlessPacingPromenade
Author:Theodor Adorno
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“Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely. Critical intelligence cannot be equal to this challenge as long as it confines itself to self-satisfied contemplation.”

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Author:Theodor Adorno
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“The only philosophy that can be practiced responsibly in the face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption: all else is reconstruction, mere technique. Perspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, that reveal its fissures and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will one day appear in the Messianic light.”

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Author:Theodor Adorno
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“Newness only becomes mere evil in its totalitarian format, where all the tension between individual and society, that once gave rise to the category of the new, is dissipated. Today the appeal to newness, of no matter what kind, provided only that it is archaic enough, has become universal, the omnipresent medium of false mimesis. The decomposition of the subject is consummated in his self-abandonment to an ever-changing sameness.”

KindSelfMatterEnoughTodayCultureEvilIndividualSubjectsUniversalNo Matter WhatMereMediumsAppealsTensionCategoriesAbandonmentFormatSamenessNewnessDecompositionIndividuals And SocietyMimesis
Book:Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life
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“So the experience of death is turned into that of the exchange of functionaries, and anything in the natural relationship to death that is not wholly absorbed into the social one is turned over to hygiene. In being seen as no more than the exit of a living creature from the social combine, death has been domesticated: dying merely confirms the absolute irrelevance of the natural organism in face of the social absolute.”

Has BeensFacesCultureSocialNaturalDyingCreaturesAbsolutesOrganismsExitLiving CreaturesHygieneIrrelevance
Book:Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life
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