36 Quotes By Theodor Adorno


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

True thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves.
Theodor Adorno on alone

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

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.
Theodor Adorno on art

The task of art today is to bring chaos into order.
Theodor Adorno on art

Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.
Theodor Adorno on art

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 Adorno on art

Everything that has ever been called folk art has always reflected domination.
Theodor Adorno on art

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

Only a humanity to whom death has become as indifferent as its members, that has itself died, can inflict it administratively on innumerable people.
Theodor Adorno on death

Normality is death.
Theodor Adorno on death

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

Happiness is obsolete: uneconomic.
Theodor Adorno on happiness

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 Adorno on happiness

Exuberant health is always, as such, sickness also.
Theodor Adorno on health

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.
Theodor Adorno on history

Intelligence is a moral category.
Theodor Adorno on intelligence

Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.
Theodor Adorno on life

Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar.
Theodor Adorno on love

Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength.
Theodor Adorno on love