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Theodor Adorno Quotes

1903–1969 Germany

Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno (September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969) was a German sociologist, philosopher, musicologist, Marxist and composer.

Germany
Academics
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Essayists
Philosophers

Also known as: Adorno, Adorno, Theodor, Theodor W Adorno, Theodor W. Adorno

Random Theodor Adorno quote

66 quotes

What appears as the positive is essentially the negative, i.e. the thing that is to be criticized.

Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965)

When I made my theoretical model, I could not have guessed that people would try to realise it with Molotov cocktails.

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.

Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy? (1963)

The straight line is regarded as the shortest distance between two people, as if they were points.

Minima Moralia (1951)

Philosophy ... must not bargain away anything of the emphatic concept of truth.

Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy? (1963)

In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than the glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.

Minima Moralia (1951)

Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.

Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The jargon takes over this task.

Jargon der Eigentlichkeit [Jargon of Authenticity (1964)

We cannot think any true thought unless we want the true. Thinking is itself an aspect of practice.

Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965)

Tenderness between people is nothing other than awareness of the possibility of relations without purpose.

Minima Moralia (1951)

Indifference to style ... is almost always symptomatic of the dogmatic sclerosis of content.

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.

Culture Industry Reconsidered (1963)

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.

Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)

The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.

Minima Moralia (1951)

When I speak of 'negative dialectics' not the least important reason for doing so is my desire to dissociate myself from this fetishization of the positive.

Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965)

Occultism is the metaphysics of dunces.

The bourgeois ... is tolerant. His love for people as they are stems from his hatred of what they might be.

Minima Moralia (1951)

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.

We are really no longer ourselves a piece of nature at the moment when we notice, when we recognize, that we are a piece of nature.

The concept of positivity in itself, in abstracto, has become part and parcel of the ideology today. ... Critique has started to become suspect, regardless of its content.

Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Theodor Adorno (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.