German sociologist & philosopher (1903-1969)
In the innermost recesses of humanism, as its very soul, there rages a frantic prisoner who, as a Fascist, turns the world into a prison.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
The empirical usability of the sacred ceremonial words makes both the speaker and listener believe in their corporeal presence.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Jargon of Authenticity
The straight line is regarded as the shortest distance between two people, as if they were points.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
The decay of giving is today matched by a hardness towards receiving.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
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.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Jargon of Authenticity
Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
The Authoritarian Personality
When I made my theoretical model, I could not have guessed that people would try to realise it with Molotov cocktails.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
attributed, The Dialectical Imagination