Kitsch evokes a future utopia looking back at a past that is selectively (mis)remembered, thereby helping to stabilize the present toward which kitsch is otherwise deeply anatagonistic. Theodor Adorno More Quotes by Theodor Adorno More Quotes From Theodor Adorno The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness Theodor Adorno conformity consciousness culture Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals. Theodor Adorno holocaust animal thinking People have so manipulated the concept of freedom that it finally boils down to the right of the stronger and richer to take from the weaker and poorer whatever they still have. Theodor Adorno stronger stills people In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes. Theodor Adorno concrete abstract responsibility Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar. Theodor Adorno romance love-is love The forms of art reflect the history of man more truthfully than do documents themselves. Theodor Adorno form men art To say 'we' and mean 'I' is one of the most recondite insults. Theodor Adorno comeback insult mean 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 done successful people There is no love that is not an echo. Theodor Adorno no-love echoes 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. Theodor Adorno differences men culture The task of art today is to bring chaos into order. Theodor Adorno design order art 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 triumph use culture Art respects the masses, by standing up to them for what they could be, rather than conforming to them in their degraded state. Theodor Adorno mass states art It is not the office of art to spotlight alternatives, but to resist by its form alone the course of the world, which permanently puts a pistol to men's heads. Theodor Adorno office men art Knowledge, which is power, knows no limits, either in its enslavement of creation or in its deference to worldly masters. Theodor Adorno creation limits knowledge On their way toward modern science human beings have discarded meaning. The concept is replaced by the formula, the cause by rules and probability. Theodor Adorno modern causes way The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite. Theodor Adorno giving-up symbolism sound Once the last trace of emotion has been eradicated, nothing remains of thought but absolute tautology. Theodor Adorno tautology lasts emotion The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available. Theodor Adorno splinters glasses eye Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices. Theodor Adorno black-and-white choices would-be
