Quotes by Theodor W. Adorno

About Theodor W. Adorno:

Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher and composer known for his critical theory of society.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The work of art still has something in common with enchantment: it posits its own, self-enclosed area, which is withdrawn from the context of profane existence, and in which special laws apply. Just as in the ceremony the magician first of all marked...

Theodor W. Adorno

They [the critics] deal with Schoenberg’s early works and all their wealth by classifying them, with the music-historical cliché, as late romantic post-Wagnerian. One might just as well dispose of Beethoven as a late-classicist post-Haydnerian.

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

Even at that time the hope of leaving behind messages in bottles on the flood of barbarism bursting on Europe was an amiable illusion: the desperate letters stuck in the mud of the spirit of rejuvenesence and were worked up by a band of Noble Human-B...

Theodor W. Adorno

Very evil people cannot really be imagined dying.

Theodor W. Adorno

A film which followed the code of the Hays Office to the strictest letter might succeed in being a great work of art, but not in a world in which a Hays Office exists.

Theodor W. Adorno

Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is radically evil.

Theodor W. Adorno

The darkening of the world makes the irrationality of art rational: radically darkened art.

Theodor W. Adorno

Art is the social antithesis of society, not directly deducible from it.

Theodor W. Adorno

Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.

Theodor W. Adorno

What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.

Theodor W. Adorno

It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies.

Theodor W. Adorno

The only philosophy that can be practiced responsibly in the face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption:...

Theodor W. Adorno

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

Theodor W. Adorno

Laughing in the cultural industry is mockery of happiness.

Theodor W. Adorno

In so far as the culture industry arouses a feeling of well-being that the world is precisely in that order suggested by the culture industry, the substitute gratification which it prepares for human beings cheats them out of the same happiness which...

Theodor W. Adorno

The element of truth in the concept of genius is to be sought in the object, in what is open, not confined by repetition.

Theodor W. Adorno

Author Bio

  • NameTheodor W. Adorno
  • DescriptionGerman sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society
  • AliasesTheodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno
  • BornSeptember 11, 1903
  • DiedAugust 6, 1969
  • CountryUnited States Of America; Germany
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Composer; Musicologist; Sociologist
  • WorksGesammelte Schriften; Negative Dialectics; Aesthetic Theory; Dialectic Of Enlightenment;