Theodor W. Adorno Quotes

The Enlightenment ideal, which all universities claim to endorse, is that everyone should think for themselves.

I want it so that every minister will be not a parrot, not an owl sitting upon a dead limb of the tree of knowledge and hooting the hoots that have been hooted for eighteen hundred years. But I want it so that each one can be an investigator, a thinker; and I want to make his congregation grand enough so that they will not only allow him to think, but will demand that he shall think, and give to them the honest truth of his thought.

We must continually remind students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic.

True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being-free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies-and therefore you can find out what religion is.

Critical thinking is to a liberal education as faith is to religion. ... the converse was true also - faith is to a liberal education as critical thinking is to religion, irrelevant and even damaging.

I think there are different ways of being rigorous, and I am asking people to be as rigorous in their pleasure as in their criticism.

I want people to think through issues. I'm just tired of blind alignment.

One of the most important things one can do in life is to brutally question every single thing you are taught.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

If we would guide by the light of reason we must let our minds be bold.

A thinking man can never be a party man.

If a book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides if we choose.

My goal is never to push anyone to do anything other than think.

Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.

Be a student, not a follower. Take interest in what someone says, then debate it, ponder it, and consider it from all angles.

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.

Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking.

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error... They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only... If [free enquiry] be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged.

The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.

Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all.

Thought must never submit, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, save to the facts themselves, because, for thought, submission would mean ceasing to be.

Reading is a mere makeshift for original thinking.

Read less, study less, but think more

If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.