Theodor W. Adorno Quotes

Bowing to the Saudi king is not an energy policy.

Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political ends. In truth, we cannot sharply enough attack those wretched crooks who would like to make religion an implement to perform political or rather business services for them.

The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends....the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.

It could be Fascist, religious or political - it's always the same model that operates in these circumstances, and it's that which is the actuality of this film. Therefore, it's not specifically an explanation of German Fascism because that would be an impossible thing to do in any case.

When I came to Washington, I was troubled to observe so many similarities between the behaviors of drug-addicted patients and my political colleagues. In Washington power is like morphine.

There is nothing the political establishment will not do - no lie that they won't tell, to hold their prestige and power at your expense. And that's what's been happening.

I can very well say without hesitation that all those who have political power, even if they use it well have acquired it by demonic mediation and even if they are not conscious of it, they are worshippers of diabolos.

A culture fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.

The real question is how much suffering we've caused our womenfolk by turning headscarves into symbols - and using women as pawns in a political game.

From 1789, perhaps even before that, it had been the willingness of politicians to exploit either the threat or the fact of violence that had given them the power to challenge constituted authority. Bloodshed was not the unfortunate by product of revolution, it was the source of energy.

I really do believe that much of what coming out of Donald Trump's mouth was a play from Vladimir Putin's playbook.

Politicians are leeches, mostly.

We're at the end of an era of failed leadership. We have been led by a divider [Barack Obama] who has sliced and diced the electorate, pitting American against American for political purposes.

It's political Daddyism and it's as old as demagogues and despotism.

The West and its media have barely covered the recent wave of repression in Turkey. The reason is simple. They are paying billions to Ankara to control and take back the refugees of the Syrian war. They are fearful that if they offend Tayyip Erdogan he will use the refugees as a political weapon. So they keep quiet.

We know that England is crying for a leader, and that leader has emerged in the person of the greatest Englishman I have ever known, Sir Oswald Mosley... When the history of Europe comes to be written I can assure you that his name will not be second to either Mussolini or Hitler.

President Obama said he is going to use the Gulf disaster to push a new energy bill through Congress. How about using the Gulf disaster to fix the Gulf disaster?

To describe Russian politics as "managed democracy" - and that's sometimes hard for outsiders to understand, because a lot of the forms of democracy exist in Russia, so there are elections; there is a press; there is a campaign, and so on. But the outcome of the campaign is never in doubt. So the campaign is manipulated. There is a real opposition in Russia. There are one or two real opposition figures who do want to change the political system, but they will probably not be allowed to run, and one way or another they will be prevented from being on the ballot.

Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.

Any kind of political campaign that taps the kind of energy that nothing else can reach would generate a tremendous high for everybody involved in it.

Putting Americans at risk for a political reason I think is wrong and I think it's unfortunate.

The problem with politics isn't the money; it's the power.

Political parties often take advantage of denial and fear in a moment of change. This is a well understood phenomenon that often leads to scapegoat-ism: blaming outsiders, such as immigrants, or racial and religious minorities. The phenomenon is behind Brexit and the violence in the political cycles in the US and EU.

The energy I was sensing in audiences was political energy, as much as anything else.

The fact that Hitler was a political genius unmasks the nature of politics in general as no other fact can.