The functional language is a radically anti-historical language: operational rationality has little room and little use for historical reason.
Herbert MarcuseThe existing liberties and the existing gratifications are tied to the requirements of repression: they themselves become instruments of repression.
Herbert MarcuseObscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the establishment, which abuses the term by applying it, not to expressions of its own morality but to those of another.
Herbert MarcuseNot every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production.
Herbert MarcuseIf mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator -- the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts.
Herbert Marcuse