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"Modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological, category."
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"The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear - and even, in certain respects, would be - the most modern of critical movements."

"Everything is much easier in the half-blind and half-deaf world of modern giants that seduce processions of the blind into the world of great emptiness. In their sky the stars shine and their names live in the parallel and independently of their work."

"And here is the shocking plot twist: as farmers produced those extra calories, the food industry figured out how to get them into the bodies of people who didn't really want to eat 700 more calories a day."

"Air travel reminds us who we are. It's the means by which we recognize ourselves as modern. The process removes us from the world and sets us apart from each other. We wander in the ambient noise, checking one more time for the flight coupon, the boarding pass, the visa. The process convinces us that at any moment we may have to submit to the force that is implied in all this, the unknown authority behind it, behind the categories, the languages we don't understand. This vast terminal has been erected to examine souls."

"These clever, amoral, inventive, destructive men, single-minded, selfish, emotionally cool, coolly attractive. I think I preferred them to the love of Jesus. They were so necessary, and not only to me. Without them we would still be living in mud huts, waiting to invent the wheel."

"The thinness of contemporary life. I can poke my finger through it."
Explore more quotes by Theodor Adorno


"The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings."


"Quality is decided by the depth at which the work incorporates the alternatives within itself, and so masters them."


"Insane sects grow with the same rhythm as big organizations. It is the rhythm of total destruction."


"He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest."


"Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or his good opinion."


"Not only is the self entwined in society; it owes society its existence in the most literal sense."
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