Quotessence
Home / Authors / Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno

Theodor Adorno Quotes

Sociologist

Filter quotes by topic

AllArtCultureIfsDoeMenPeopleWorldHumansSelfLifeThinkingTodayFormHas BeensIndustryLyingWayConceptsIdeologyOrder

Famous Theodor Adorno Quotes

“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.”

HumansCultureInterestHuman BeingsTroubleProductsIndustryDemandHarmonyCollectivesRepresentativesBenevolentIllusory
Author:Theodor Adorno
Create image

“The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. The promissory note which, with its plots and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged; the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu.”

RealCulturePleasureIndustryPromiseDrawsNotesSatisfiedConsumersPlotCheatIllusoryMenusDinersStaging
Book:Dialectic of Enlightenment
Create image

“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.”

WritingMindLongSelfTodayCultureChallengesProgressImpossibleStageEqualElementsIntellectualCriticismAbsolutesFinalsCriticalSatisfiedContemplationHolocaustPreparingBarbarismBarbaricDialectics
Author:Theodor Adorno
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“What has become alien to men is the human component of culture, its closest part, which upholds them against the world. They make common cause with the world against themselves, and the most alienated condition of all, the omnipresence of commodities, their own conversion into appendages of machinery, is for them a mirage of closeness.”

MenWorldHumansCultureCausesCommonConditionsConversionAliensClosestCommodityComponentsMachineryClosenessMirages
Author:Theodor Adorno
Create image

“The film has succeeded in transforming subjects so indistinguishably into social functions, that those wholly encompassed, no longer aware of any conflict, enjoy their own dehumanization as something human, as the joy of warmth. The total interconnectedness of the culture industry, omitting nothing, is one with total social delusion.”

HumansFilmJoyCultureSocialEnjoySubjectsIndustryConflictFunctionDelusionWarmthTransformingInterconnectednessDehumanizationOmitting
Book:Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life
Create image