261 Quotes by Theodor W. Adorno

The very wish to be right, down to its subtlest form of logical reflection, is an expression of the spirit of self-preservation which philosophy is precisely concerned to break down.

Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.

In the general tendency toward specialization, philosophy too has established itself as a specialized discipline, one purified of all specific content. In so doing, philosophy has denied its own constitutive concept: the intellectual freedom that does not obey the dictates of specialized knowledge.

The gods look in pleasure on penitent sinners.

What is or is not the jargon is determined by whether the word is written in an intonation which places it transcendently in opposition to its own meaning; by whether the individual words are loaded at the expense of the sentence, its propositional force, and the thought content.

In the end indignation over kitsch is anger at tis shameless revelling in the joy of imitation.

Of the world as it exists, it is not possible to be enough afraid.

Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.

Because thought has by now been perverted into the solving of assigned problems, even what is not assigned is processed like a problem.