Theodor W. Adorno Quotes

Theodor W. Adorno (84)

Birth:	11th September, 1903
Death:	6th August, 1969
Nationality:	German
Profession:	Philosopher, Sociologist

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• Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Between, Freedom, Choose, Choice

• The recent past always presents itself as if destroyed by catastrophes.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Always, Presents, Destroy

• But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Dies, Despair

• He who integrates is lost.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Lost

• He who matures early lives in anticipation.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Anticipation, Early, Lives, Mature

• Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Art, Truth

  Tags in Being, Lie, Magic

• Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Work

  Tags in Every, Crime

• To say ‘we’ and mean ‘I’ is one of the most recondite insults.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Insult

  Tags in Say, Most, Mean

• A successful work of art is not one which resolves contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Art

  Tags in Conflict, Creativity

• Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Technology

  Tags in Precise, Making, Men

• The hardest hit, as everywhere, are those who have no choice.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Power

  Tags in Authority, Injustice, Control

• Tact is the discrimination of differences. It consists in conscious deviations.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Tact, Differences, Conscious

• The task of art today is to bring chaos into order.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Task, Today, Bring, Order

• In his state of complete powerlessness the individual perceives the time he has left to live as a brief reprieve.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Brief, Individual, State, Time, Complete

• The gods look in pleasure on penitent sinners.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in God

  Tags in Pleasure, Look

• Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Reflection, Anything, Today, Realization, Longer

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

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think, Moment, Thinking, Longer

• For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing, Place, Man, Live, Longer

• Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Wrong, Live

• The first and only principle of sexual ethics: the accuser is always in the wrong.

  Theodor W. Adorno

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Always, Wrong, Principle