Quote #109

'The scientific industry has its exact counterpart in the kind of minds it harnesses: they no longer need to do themselves any violence in becoming their own voluntary and zealous overseers. Even if they show themselves, outside their official capacity, to be quite human and sensible being, they are paralysed by pathic stupidity the moment they begin to think professionally.'

More from Theodor Adorno

  1. 'The recent past always presents itself as if destroyed by catastrophes.'
  2. 'The specific is not exclusive: it lacks the aspiration to totality.'
  3. 'The poor are prevented from thinking by the discipline of others, the rich by their own.'
  4. 'The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass.'
  5. 'The overbearing matter-of-factness which sacrifices the subject to the ascertainment of the truth, rejects at once truth and objectivity.'
  6. 'The task of art today is to bring chaos into order.'
  7. 'The only philosophy which can be responsibly practised in face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present t…
  8. 'The very people who burst with proofs of exuberant vitality could easily be taken for prepared corpses, from whom the news of their not-qu…

All Theodor Adorno quotes