261 Quotes by Theodor W. Adorno

To say ‘we’ and mean ‘I’ is one of the most recondite insults.

The taboos that constitute a man’s intellectual stature, often sedimented experiences and unarticulated insights, always operate against inner impulses that he has learned to condemn, but which are so strong that only an unquestioning and unquestioned authority can hold them in check.

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

In many people it is already an impertinence to say ‘I’.

Words of the jargon sound as if they said something higher than what they mean.

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

That all men are alike is exactly what society would like to hear. It considers actual or imagined differences as stigmas indicating that not enough has yet been done; that something has still been left outside its machinery, not quite determined by its totality.

The whole is the false.

Fascism was not simply a conspiracy – although it was that – but it was something that came to life in the course of a powerful social development. Language provides it with a refuge. Within this refuge a smoldering evil expresses itself as though it were salvation.