Theodor W. Adorno Quotes

Words contract a significance which clings to them long after the condition of things to which they owe it has passed away.

I think that America has an obsession with history, really.

All societies are historical.

With each passing decade, history becomes less real for us, less immediate and essential to our way of life, and so, like 'green' nature, more of a commodity or an advertising gimmick.

The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help.

When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us.

You have to look at history as an evolution of society.

Man is a history—making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.

History happens all around us.

What history is about is human beings.

We will pass on a document will not have exactly the same meaning it had when we received it from our fathers.

History is simply man’s desperate bid to give substance to his most visionary dreams.

As artists, our primary function is not to be educators - but we are at a time in history, where for us, our history needs to give context for stories that we hope to tell down the road.

I love and I'm intrigued by what history does to people and to subjects that matter.

If we talk about art in general... all the works of art, each one of them could reflect a moment in the history of mankind, the time in which it was created.

The stories in our music form a special viewpoint on the story of America in the 20th Century.

Language is not just a code; you are writing into its history, into its tides.

My work as a whole is about excavating and shining a light on pieces of history that not only need to be seen and heard, but that can also add to the conversation about what's going on now.

I find the history of toys very interesting on an academic level - they're very much products of their time, just like paintings and furniture tell us about their time.

History remains an open horizon that cannot be dismissed through appeals to the end of history or end of ideology.

Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past.

Remove from the history of the past all those actions which have either sprung directly from the religious nature of man, or been modified by it, and you have the history of another world and of another race.

Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.

History is not just the evolution of technology; it is the evolution of thought.

Culture has always been more important than politics. Sometimes culture is a mirror that reflects what is; sometimes it's a search-light pointing the way to what will be.