Quotes from Theodor W. Adorno

Both high art and industrially produced consumer art] bear the stigmata of capitalism, both contain elements of change. Both are torn halves of an integral freedom, to which, however, they do not add up.

Ob ein Mensch Erfahrungen machen kann oder nicht, ist in letzter Instanz davon abhängig, wie er vergisst.

To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.

But the castration of perception by a court of control that denies it any anticipatory desire, forces it thereby into a pattern of helplessly reiterating what is already known.

They murder so that whatever to them seems living, shall resemble themselves.

It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident anymore, not its inner life, not its relation to the world, not even its right to exist.

Fascism was not simply a conspiracy—although it was that—but it was something that came to life in the course of a powerful social development. Language provides it with a refuge. Within this refuge a smoldering evil expresses itself as though it were salvation.

Une philosophie transformée devrait casser cette prétention, ne plus faire croire à elle-même et aux autres qu'elle dispose de l'infini. Mais au lieu de cela c'est elle qui, subtilement comprise deviendrait infinie dans la mesure où elle dédaignerait de se fixer dans un corpus de théorèmes dénombrables.

In principle everyone, however powerful, is an object.

You can see likewise that the contradiction involved in the concept of 'salvaging' is not a simple intellectual contradiction, but a dialectical one. That is to say, it is only possible to rescue ontology in the shape of this dialectical contradiction, in this pattern in which existence and existent things are mutually interrelated and interdependent - as opposed to an abstract conception of ontology as pure existence standing in absolute opposition to existing beings.

even there, where the rejection of the system is taken for granted and for that reason a lax and cunning conformism of its own has developed.

The undiminished irrationality of rational society encourages people to elevate religion into an end in itself, without regard to its content: to view religion as a mere attitude, as a quality of subjectivity. All this at the cost of religion itself. One needs only to be a believer—no matter what he believes in.

What human beings seek to learn from nature is how to use it to dominate wholly both it and human beings. Nothing else counts. Ruthless toward itself, the Enlightenment has eradicated the last remnant of its own self-awareness. Only thought which does violence to itself is hard enough to shatter myths.

In truth, the best works of art are by no means the most perfect ones, but rather those whose imperfection bears the most profound witness to their fundamental contradictions. That is why those works, whose success takes its measure from the failure of the world, assume something helpless, frail and disorganized under the gaze of contemporary cultural administration.

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

Con respecto a lo negativo, el hecho de que no pueda hacer otra cosa que darle la razón me obliga a un cierto grado de laconismo.

They are official sinners but privately repentants. At the present stage of our society even the relation between sin and repentance may have undergone a fundamental change and may be the opposite of what it used to be formerly.

A man who lies is ashamed, for each lie teaches him the degradation of a world which, forcing him to lie in order to live, promptly sings the praises of loyalty and truthfulness.

Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream; hence it may have been wrong to say that after Auschwitz you could no longer write poems.

If in keeping with Hegel's insight all feeling related to an aesthetic object has an accidental aspect, usually that of psychological projection, then what the work demands from its beholder is knowledge, and indeed, knowledge that does justice to it: The work wants its truth and untruth to be grasped.

Una tale uguaglianza in cui scompaiono le differenze favorisce nascostamente la disuguaglianza.

Reduzidas a pura homenagem, as obras de arte pervertidas e corruptas são secretamente empurradas pelos beneficiados para o meio dos trastes, com os quais são assimiladas. Os consumidores podem se alegrar que haja tanta coisa para ver e ouvir. Praticamente pode-se ter tudo.

Il mondo nuovo è un unico campo di concentramento che si crede un paradiso, non essendoci nulla da contrapporgli.

It is not so much that subjectivity is communicated or expressed by music as that in it, as in a theater, something objective is enacted, the identifiable face of which has been obliterated. It is rather that the orchestra plays within musical consciousness than that a consciousness is projected onto the orchestra.