Thinking Quotes by Theodor Adorno

8 Thinking quotes by Theodor Adorno

All Thinking quotes Theodor Adorno’s page

Adorno’s critical theory often feels dense, but these eight lines strip it down to core observations about culture and cognition, giving a quick taste of his intellectual rigor.

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A thinking that approaches it objects openly, rigorously ... is also free toward its objects in the sense that it refuses to…

Theodor Adorno

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The poor are prevented from thinking by the discipline of others, the rich by their own.

Theodor Adorno

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A successful work of art is not one which resolves contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of…

Theodor Adorno

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Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.

Theodor Adorno

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Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly.…

Theodor Adorno

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Thinking no longer means anymore than checking at each moment whether one can indeed think.

Theodor Adorno

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Vague expression permits the hearer to imagine whatever suits him and what he already thinks in any case.

Theodor Adorno

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The objective tendency of the Enlightenment, to wipe out the power of images over man, is not matched by any subjective progress…

Theodor Adorno

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More by Theodor Adorno

Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies.

Theodor Adorno

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No harm comes to man from outside alone: dumbness is the objective spirit.

Theodor Adorno

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Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past.

Theodor Adorno

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The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness

Theodor Adorno

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The man for whom time stretches out painfully is one waiting in vain, disappointed at not finding tomorrow already continuing yesterday.

Theodor Adorno

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Everybody must have projects all the time. The maximum must be extracted from leisure ... The whole of life must look like a job,…

Theodor Adorno

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It is not the office of art to spotlight alternatives, but to resist by its form alone the course of the world, which permanently…

Theodor Adorno

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“The paradise offered by the culture industry is the same old drudgery. Both escape and elopement are pre-designed to lead back to the starting…

Theodor Adorno

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The sublime is only a step removed from the ridiculous.

Theodor Adorno

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The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through…

Theodor Adorno

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When all actions are mathematically calculated, they also take on a stupid quality.

Theodor Adorno

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A thinking that approaches it objects openly, rigorously ... is also free toward its objects in the sense that it refuses to have rules…

Theodor Adorno

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None of the abstract concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than that of eternal peace.

Theodor Adorno

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The creed of evil has been, since the beginnings of highly industrialized society, not only a precursor of barbarism but a mask of good.…

Theodor Adorno

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The most powerful person is he who is able to do least himself and burden others most with the things for which he lends…

Theodor Adorno

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