Theodor W. Adorno Quotes

Theodor W. Adorno

Profession : Philosopher

Birth : September 11, 1903

He who matures early lives in anticipation.

Theodor W. Adorno

In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.

Theodor W. Adorno

He who has laughter on his side has no need of proof.

Theodor W. Adorno

In psycho-analysis nothing is true except the exaggerations.

Theodor W. Adorno

True thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves.

Theodor W. Adorno

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

Theodor W. Adorno

Dialectic thought is an attempt to break through the coercion of logic by its own means.

Theodor W. Adorno

Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or his good opinion.

Theodor W. Adorno

The culture industry not so much adapts to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them.

Theodor W. Adorno

In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew.

Theodor W. Adorno

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

Theodor W. Adorno

All satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay. Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire.

Theodor W. Adorno

The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings.

Theodor W. Adorno

Once the last trace of emotion has been eradicated, nothing remains of thought but absolute tautology.

Theodor W. Adorno

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

Theodor W. Adorno

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

Theodor W. Adorno

Modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological, category.

Theodor W. Adorno

There is no love that is not an echo.

Theodor W. Adorno

A German is someone who cannot tell a lie without believing it himself.

Theodor W. Adorno

Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.

Theodor W. Adorno