“No harm comes to man from outside alone: dumbness is the objective spirit.”
Alone
“No emancipation without that of society.”
SocietyAll Quotes by Theodor Adorno
“He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest.”
Society“The task of art today is to bring chaos into order.”
Art“Exuberant health is always, as such, sickness also.”
Health“Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.”
Art“Only a humanity to whom death has become as indifferent as its members, that has itself died, can inflict it administratively on innumerable people.”
Death“In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew.”
Age“Work while you work, play while you play - this is a basic rule of repressive self-discipline.”
Work“Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength.”
Love“Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.”
Art“If time is money, it seems moral to save time, above all one's own, and such parsimony is excused by consideration for others. One is straight-forward.”
Money“No emancipation without that of society.”
Society“Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.”
Life“Not only is the self entwined in society it owes society its existence in the most literal sense.”
Society“True thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves.”
Alone“Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men.”
Technology“A pencil and rubber are of more use to thought than a battalion of assistants. To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it.”
Happiness“Intelligence is a moral category.”
Intelligence“Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.”
Art“History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.”
History