Theodor W. Adorno - Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)

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Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

Theodor W. Adorno
The blessing that the market does not ask about birth is paid for in the exchange society by the fact that the possibilities conferred by birth are molded to fit the production of goods that can be bought on the market.

Theodor W. Adorno
Only thought which does violence to itself is hard enough to shatter myth.

Theodor W. Adorno
As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities.

Theodor W. Adorno
The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.

Theodor W. Adorno
The Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.

Theodor W. Adorno
What human beings seek to learn from nature is how to use it to dominate wholly both it and human beings. Nothing else counts.

Theodor W. Adorno
Knowledge, which is power, knows no limits, either in its enslavement of creation or in its deference to worldly masters.

Theodor W. Adorno
Humanity had to inflict terrible injuries on itself before the self, the identical, purpose-directed, masculine character of human beings was created, and something of this process is repeated in every childhood.

Theodor W. Adorno
The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.

Theodor W. Adorno
On their way toward modern science human beings have discarded meaning. The concept is replaced by the formula, the cause by rules and probability.

Theodor W. Adorno
The work of art still has something in common with enchantment: it posits its own, self-enclosed area, which is withdrawn from the context of profane existence, and in which special laws apply.

Theodor W. Adorno