When even the dictators of today appeal to reason, they mean that they possess the most tanks. They were rational enough to build them; others should be rational enough to yield to them.
Interpretation
This quote critiques how dictators use the guise of reason to justify their power and force.
Max Horkheimer highlights the irony in how dictators claim to operate under reason and rationality while their actions are primarily driven by brute force. The quote suggests that their interpretation of reason is skewed, equating power with rationality and expecting others to accept this distorted logic, thereby exposing the flawed nature of authoritarianism.
In practice
In a debate about political power, this quote can illustrate the use of force under the guise of reason.
A revolutionary career does not lead to banquets and honorary titles, interesting research and professorial wages. It leads to misery, disgrace, ingratitude, prison and a voyage into the unknown, illuminated by only an almost superhuman belief.
The complexity of the connection between the world of perception and the world of physics does not preclude that such a connection can be shown to exist at any time.
You have no choice about your capacity to feel that something is good for you or evil, but what you will consider good or evil, what will give you joy or pain, what you will love or hate, desire or fear, depends on your standard of value.
The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.
When you are Real, shabbiness doesn't matter.
Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. When independent-thinking people (and here I do not include the corporate media) begin to rally under flags, when writers, painters, musicians, film makers suspend their judgment and blindly yoke their art to the service of the “Nation,” it’s time for all of us to sit up and worry.
Nothing in our lives is a mere insignificant detail to God.
The world has been created for everyone's use, but you few rich are trying to keep it up for yourselves. For not merely the possession of the earth, but the very sky, the air, and the sea are claimed for the use of the rich few... The earth belongs to all, not just to the rich.
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