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. While he gropingly forms his own life in the frail image of a true existence, he should never forget its frailty,
nor how little the image is a substitute for true life. Against such
awareness, however, pulls the momentum of the bourgeois within him.
The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available.
Theodor W. AdornoMots clés humility hypocrisy self-awareness
Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is radically evil.
Theodor W. AdornoMots clés morality evil inertia triviality
Dissonance is the truth about harmony.
Theodor W. AdornoThey [the critics] deal with Schoenberg’s early works and all their wealth by classifying them, with the music-historical cliché, as late romantic post-Wagnerian. One might just as well dispose of Beethoven as a late-classicist post-Haydnerian.
Theodor W. AdornoMots clés music music-criticism new-music
There is no right life in the wrong one.
Theodor W. AdornoEven at that time the hope of leaving behind messages in bottles on the flood of barbarism bursting on Europe was an amiable illusion: the desperate letters stuck in the mud of the spirit of rejuvenesence and were worked up by a band of Noble Human-Beings and other riff-raff into highly artistic but inexpensive wall-adornments. Only since then has progress in communications really got into its stride. Who, in the end, is to take it amiss if even the freest of free spirits no longer write for an imaginary posterity, more trusting, if possible, than even their contemporaries, but only for the dead God?
Theodor W. AdornoMots clés writing god communication futility
Very evil people cannot really be imagined dying.
Theodor W. AdornoMots clés evil
Thus is order ensured: some have to play the game because they cannot otherwise live, and those who could live otherwise are kept out because they do not want to play the game. It is as if the class from which independent intellectuals have defected takes its revenge, by pressing its demands home in the very domain where the deserter seeks refuge.
Theodor W. AdornoThe recent past always presents itself as if destroyed by catastrophes. The expression of history in things is no other than that of past torment.
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