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About this quote

What does it mean?
True freedom means rejecting imposed binary choices rather than picking between them.
In plain terms
Freedom is not choosing between two options, but refusing the options.
What can you take from it?
Question the framework of choices presented to you.

Where it applies

  • political voting
  • career decisions

Putting it to work

  • seeking alternative solutions
  • challenging false dilemmas

Questions to consider

  • When is it possible to reject all presented choices?
  • What are the costs of refusing binary options?

Another view

Sometimes practical decisions still require selecting from limited options.

More from Theodor Adorno

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  2. 'Genuine things are those to which commodities and other means of exchange can be reduced, particularly gold. But like gold, genuineness, abstracted as the pro…

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  3. 'Fascism is itself less 'ideological', in so far as it openly proclaims the principle of domination that is elsewhere concealed.'

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