That all men are alike is exactly what society would like to hear. It considers actual or imagined differences as stigmas indicating that not enough has yet been done; that something has still been left outside its machinery, not quite determined by its totality.
Theodor AdornoAll satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay. Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire.
Theodor AdornoIn the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.
Theodor AdornoAuschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: theyโre only animals.
Theodor AdornoNewness only becomes mere evil in its totalitarian format, where all the tension between individual and society, that once gave rise to the category of the new, is dissipated. Today the appeal to newness, of no matter what kind, provided only that it is archaic enough, has become universal, the omnipresent medium of false mimesis. The decomposition of the subject is consummated in his self-abandonment to an ever-changing sameness.
Theodor Adorno