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About this quote

What does it mean?
Auschwitz starts wherever someone sees a slaughterhouse and thinks the victims are merely animals.
In plain terms
Dehumanizing animals enables atrocity.
What can you take from it?
Recognize the humanity in all beings.

Where it applies

  • ethical debates
  • animal rights

Putting it to work

  • challenge animal‑use narratives
  • promote empathy

Questions to consider

  • How does language shape our view of animals?
  • Where do we draw moral lines?

Another view

Not all slaughterhouses imply moral equivalence to genocide.

More from Theodor Adorno

  1. 'Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.'

    Permalink to quote #14
  2. 'Because thought has by now been perverted into the solving of assigned problems, even what is not assigned is processed like a problem.'

    Permalink to quote #16
  3. 'Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.'

    Permalink to quote #13

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