Self-determination, the autonomy of the individual, asserts itself in the right to race his automobile, to handle his power tools, to buy a gun, to communicate to mass audiences his opinion, no matter how ignorant, how aggressive, it may be. — Herbert Marcuse Copy Share Image
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… — Herbert Marcuse Copy Share Image
The strains and stresses suffered by the individual in society are grounded in the normal functioning of that society (and of the individual!) rather… — Herbert Marcuse Copy Share Image
[Art] can speak its own language only as long as the images are alive which refuse and refute the established order. — Herbert Marcuse Copy Share Image
If man has learned to see and know what really is, he will act in accordance with truth, Epistemology is in itself ethics, and… — Herbert Marcuse Copy Share Image
Hypostatized into a ritual pattern, Marxian theory becomes ideology. But its content and function distinguish it from classical forms of ideology; it is not… — Herbert Marcuse Copy Share Image
Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of the men and women who could change the… — Herbert Marcuse Copy Share Image
The closed language does not demonstrate and explain it communicates decision, dictum, command. Where it defines, the definition becomes "separation of good from evil;"… — Herbert Marcuse Copy Share Image
The apparatus defeats its own purpose if its purpose is to create a humane existence on the basis of a humanized nature. — Herbert Marcuse Copy Share Image
“As Hegel defines it: "Thinking is, indeed, essentially the negation of that which is before us." ... Reason is the negation of the negative.… — Herbert Marcuse Copy Share Image
The precarious ontological link between Logos and Eros is broken, and scientific rationality emerges as essentially neutral. — Herbert Marcuse Copy Share Image
If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their… — Herbert Marcuse Copy Share Image
This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression. — Herbert Marcuse Copy Share Image