Theodor W. Adorno Quotes

Theodor W. Adorno

Profession : Philosopher

Birth : September 11, 1903

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

Theodor W. Adorno

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

Theodor W. Adorno

The specific is not exclusive: it lacks the aspiration to totality.

Theodor W. Adorno

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

Theodor W. Adorno

The gods look in pleasure on penitent sinners.

Theodor W. Adorno

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

Theodor W. Adorno

Fascism is itself less 'ideological', in so far as it openly proclaims the principle of domination that is elsewhere concealed.

Theodor W. Adorno

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

Theodor W. Adorno

The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass.

Theodor W. Adorno

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

Theodor W. Adorno

The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.

Theodor W. Adorno

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

Theodor W. Adorno

Intelligence is a moral category.

Theodor W. Adorno

Truth is inseperable from the illusory belief that from the figures of the unreal one day, in spite of all, real deliverance will come.

Theodor W. Adorno

The most powerful person is he who is able to do least himself and burden others most with the things for which he lends his name and pockets the credit.

Theodor W. Adorno

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.

Theodor W. Adorno

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

Theodor W. Adorno

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

Theodor W. Adorno

Death is imposed only on creatures, not their creations, and has therefore always appeared in art in a broken form: as allegory.

Theodor W. Adorno

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.

Theodor W. Adorno