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.
When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense.
I lay there silently, hoarding my small dignity. I did not ask about the gate or the closet. I did not question the bedtime ritual where, on the cold bathroom tiles, I was spread out daily and examined for flaws. I did not know that my bones, those solids, those pieces of sculpture would not splinter.
...I knew he would be dead, because Dally Winston wanted to be dead and he always got what he wanted.
Nobody in the developing world is going to take, as an answer to their aspirations, the developed world's reply: 'Sorry, you can't; we've already used it all up.' To earn the right to look the developing world in the eye and start this conversation, we need a reassessment of how we live and what we want.
Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth.
He told me once that there was no better faith than a wounded faith and sometimes I wonder if that is what he was doing all along --trying to wound his faith in order to test it--and I was just another stone in the way of his God.
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