Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices.
Theodor AdornoRead
The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite.
More from Theodor Adorno
All quotes →What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.
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Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.
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Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.
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The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available.
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The culture industry not so much adapts to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them.
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