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About this quote

What does it mean?
Living in despair makes a life feel meaningless.
In plain terms
Despair empties life of purpose.
What can you take from it?
Seek hope to give life value.

Where it applies

  • personal crisis
  • grief

Putting it to work

  • practice gratitude
  • find supportive community

Questions to consider

  • What gives your life meaning?
  • How can you counter despair?

Another view

Some may find meaning despite despair.

More from Theodor Adorno

  1. '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
  2. 'Dialectic thought is an attempt to break through the coercion of logic by its own means.'

    Permalink to quote #18
  3. 'Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals.'

    Permalink to quote #15

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  3. Myth is the nothing that is all.

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