20 Quotes by Max Horkheimer

The task of critical reflection is not merely to understand the various facts in their historical development (...) but also to see through the notion of fact itself, in its development and therefore in its relativity.

Once the philosophical foundation of democracy has collapsed, the statement that dictatorship is bad is rationally valid only for those who are not its beneficiaries, and there is no theoretical obstacle to the transformation of this statement into its opposite.

A revolutionary career does not lead to banquets and honorary titles, interesting research and professorial wages. It leads to misery, disgrace, ingratitude, prison and a voyage into the unknown, illuminated by only an almost superhuman belief.

...los filósofos han concertado la paz con el mundo, mientras que en otro tiempo estar desunido con él pertenecía a la esencia de la filosofía. Schopenhauer y Nietzsche, desobedientes de la gran filosofía, anticiparon en sus vidas la nueva soledad del pensador.

He has nothing useful to say about fascism who is unwilling to mention capitalism.

Well-informed cynicism is only another mode of conformity.

The Revolution won't happen with guns, rather it will happen incrementally, year by year, generation by generation. We will gradually infiltrate their educational institutions and their political offices, transforming them slowly into Marxist entities as we move towards universal egalitarianism.

El concepto total de ideología arrastra a la conversión de la dependencia de todo lo espiritual en experiencia teórica decisiva.Sin duda, al «intelectual libre», como dice la expresión, se le concede gran independencia; pero, en último término, ésta no estriba en otra cosa sino en anunciar y aceptar la dependencia.

Nuestra misión actual es, antes bien, asegurar que en el futuro no vuelva a perderse la capacidad para la teoría y para la acción que nace de esta [...] Debemos luchar para que la humanidad no quede desmoralizada para siempre por los terribles acontecimientos del presente, para que la fe en un futuro feliz de la sociedad, en un futuro de paz y digno del hombre, no desaparezca de la tierra.