Dialectic of Enlightenment Quotes

“As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities.”
― Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even where it is shown. Basically it is helplessness. It is flight; not, as is asserted, flight from a wretched reality, but from the last remaining thought of resistance.”
― Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. The promissory note which, with its plots and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged; the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu.”
― Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“The work of art still has something in common with enchantment: it posits its own, self-enclosed area, which is withdrawn from the context of profane existence, and in which special laws apply.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 out the limits of the area where the sacred powers were to come into play, so every work of art describes its own circumference which closes it off from actuality.”
― Adorno, Theodor W., Dialectic of Enlightenment

“The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.”
― Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“But there is another conclusion: to laugh at logic if it runs counter to the interests of men.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“The paradise offered by the culture industry is the same old drudgery. Both escape and elopement are pre-designed to lead back to the starting point. Pleasure promotes the resignation which it ought to help to forget.”
― Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Intellect's true concern is a negation of reification.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Even the aesthetic activities of political opposites are one in their enthusiastic obedience to the rhythm of the iron system.”
― Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“On the way from mythology to logistics thought has lost the element of self-reflection and today machinery disables men even as it nurtures them.”
― Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Today the order of life allows no room for the ego to draw spiritual or intellectual conclusions. The thought which leads to knowledge is neutralized and used as a mere qualification on specific labor markets and to heighten to commodity value of the personality.”
― Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“The self, entirely encompassed by civilization, is dissolved in an element composed of the very inhumanity which civilization has sought from the first to escape.”
― Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Ruthlessly, in despite of itself, the Enlightenment has extinguished any trace of its own self-consciousness. The only kind of thinking that is sufficiently hard to shatter myths is ultimately self-destructive.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“The great artists were never those whose works embodied style in its least fractured, most perfect form but those who adopted style as a rigor to set against the chaotic expression of suffering, as a negative truth.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“There is only one expression for truth: the thought which repudiates injustice. If insistence on the good sides of life is not sublated in the negative whole, it transfigures its own opposite: violence.”
― Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“What we had set out to do was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Whereas the unconscious colossus of real existence, subjectless capitalism, inflicts its destruction blindly, the deludedly rebellious subject is willing to see that destruction as its fulfillment, and, together with the biting cold it emits toward human beings misused as things, it also radiates the perverted love which, in the world of things, takes the place of love in its immediacy.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Could you not portray the good sides of life and proclaim love as a principle, instead of endless bitterness?"

There is only one expression for truth: the thought which repudiates injustice. If insistence on the good sides of life is not sublated in the negative whole, it transfigures its own opposite: violence.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“There is only one expression for truth: the thought which repudiates injustice. If insistence on the good sides of life is not sublated in the negative whole, it transfigures its own opposite: violence.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“What human beings seek to learn from nature is how to use it to dominate wholly both it and human beings. Nothing else counts. Ruthless toward itself, the Enlightenment has eradicated the last remnant of its own self-awareness. Only thought which does violence to itself is hard enough to shatter myths.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Podređenost prirodi današnjih ljudi ne može se odvojiti od društvenog napretka. Rast privredne produktivnosti koja, s jedne strane, stvara uvjete za pravedniji svijet, daje, s druge strane, tehničkom aparatu i grupama koje njime raspolažu neizmjernu nadmoć nad ostalim stanovništvom. Pojedinac je spram ekonomijskih moći posve anuliran. Pri tomu te moći dovode snagu društva nad prirodom do neslućene visine. Dok pojedinac nestaje pred aparatom što ga poslužuje, bolje je opskrbljen nego ikada. U nepravednom stanju nemoć i povodljivost masa rastu sa količinom dobara kojom raspolažu. Materijalno znatan a socijalno ništavan porast životnog standarda nižih odrazuje se u varljivoj proširenosti duha. Pravi predmet duha jest negacija postvarenja. On nestaje tamo gdje se pretvara u kulturno dobro i gdje se isporučuje radi konzumiranja. Poplava precizne informacije i timarene zabave ujedno čini ljude spretnijima i glupljima.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“The more completely the machinery of thought subjugates existence, the more blindly it is satisfied with reproducing it. Enlightenment thereby regresses to the mythology it has never been able to escape. For mythology had reflected in its forms the essence of the existing order - cyclical motion, fate, domination of the world as truth - and had renounced hope.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Critical thought, which does not call a halt before progress itself, requires us to take up the cause of the remnants of freedom, of tendencies toward real humanity, even though they seem powerless in face of the great historical trend.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Es justamente el espíritu dominador de la naturaleza el que continuamente reivindica la superioridad de la naturaleza en la competencia”
― Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“La Ilustración se relaciona con las cosas como el dictador con los hombres. Éste los concede en la medida en en que puede manipularlos.”
― Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Die Aufklärung aber erkannte im platonischen und aristotelischen Erbteil der Metaphysik die alten Mächte wieder und verfolgte den Wahrheitsanspruch der Universalien als Superstition. In der Autorität der allgemeinen Begriffe meint sie noch die Furcht vor den Dämonen zu erblicken, durch deren Abbilder die Menschen im magischen Ritual die Natur zu beeinflussen suchten. Von nun an soll die Materie endlich ohne Illusion waltender oder innewohnender Kräfte, verborgeneer Eigenschaften beherrscht werden. Was dem Maß von Berechenbarkeit und Nützlichkeit sich nicht fügen will, gilt der Aufklärung für verdächtig. Darf sie sich einmal ungestört von auswendiger Unterdrückung entfalten, so ist kein Halten mehr. Ihren eigenen Ideen von Menschenrecht ergeht es dabei nicht anders als den älteren Universalien. An jedem geistigen Widerstand, den sie findet, vermehrt sich bloß ihre Stärke. Das rührt daher, daß Aufklärung auch in den Mythen noch sich selbst wiedererkennt. Auf welche Mythen der Widerstand sich immer berufen mag, schon dadurch, dass sie in solchem Gegensatz zu Argumenten werden, bekennen sie sich zum Prinzip der zersetzenden Rationalität, das sie der Aufklärung vorwerfen. Aufklärung ist totalitär.”
― Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“A ciência ela própria não tem consciência de si, ela é um instrumento, enquanto o esclarecimento é a filosofia que identifica a verdade ao sistema científico.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“Enthusiasm is bad. Calm and resolution constitute the strength of virtue. “That is the state of health in moral life, whereas the affect, even when it is excited by the idea of the good, is a momentarily lustrous phenomenon which leaves behind lassitude.”25 Juliette’s friend Clairwil makes exactly the same observation with regard to vice.26 “My soul is hardened, and I am far from preferring sensibility to the happy indifference I now enjoy. Oh Juliette . . . perhaps you are deceiving yourself about the dangerous sensibility prized by so many fools.” Apathy arises at the turning points in bourgeois history, as in the history of antiquity, when the pauci beati become aware of their powerlessness in face of the overwhelming historical tendency. It marks the retreat of the individual’s spontaneity into the private sphere, which is thus established as the truly bourgeois form of existence. Stoicism—which is the bourgeois philosophy—makes it easier for the privileged to look what threatens them in the eye by dwelling on the suffering of others. It affirms the general by elevating private existence, as protection from it, to the status of a principle. The private sphere of the bourgeois* is an upper-class cultural asset which has come down in the world.”
― Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments