Theodor W. Adorno Quotes

One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural …. We can live our lives without the constant fear that we have offended this or that deity who must be placated by incantation or sacrifice, or that we are at the mercy of devils or the Fates. With increasing knowledge, the intellectual darkness that surrounds us is illuminated and we learn more of the beauty and wonder of the natural world.

Enlightenment, don't know what it is. It's up to you, the way you think.

It is by his freedom that a man knows himself, by his sovereignty over his own life that a man measures himself.

when knowledge comes in at the door, fear and superstition fly out of the window.

This is one of the great social functions of science - to free people from superstition

The first effect of emancipation from the Church was not to make men think rationally, but to open their minds to every sort of antique nonsense

One can make one's life a complete misery, worrying about burglaries and shipwrecks, but ask anyone, anyone you know ... earth-shattering disasters and fabulous inheritances all seems to take place exclusively in the newspapers.

Fear is bred from ignorance. So knowledge is a weapon against it, and reason is the tool of knowledge.

Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment.

On this earth, though far and near, without love, there's only fear.

Fear wins or Freedom wins, and I choose Freedom.

Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.

Furthermore, it is not that Spirit is present but you need to be enlightened in order to see it. It is not that you are one with Spirit but just don't know it yet. Because that would also imply that there is some place Spirit is not. No, according to Dzogchen, you are always already one with Spirit, and that awareness is always already fully present, right now. You are looking directly at Spirit, with Spirit, in every act of awareness. There is nowhere Spirit is not.

Fear is the enemy of logic. There is no more debilitating, crushing, self-defeating, sickening thing in the world--to an individual or to a nation.

Our attachment to no nation on earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.

The right of self-government does not comprehend the government of others.

I say, the acknowledgment of God in ChristAccepted by thy reason, solves for theeAll questions in the earth and out of it,And has so far advanced thee to be wise.

Under our institutions each individual is born to sovereignty. Whatever he may adopt as a means of livelihood, his real business is serving his country. He cannot hold himself above his fellow men. The greatest place of command is really the place of obedience, and the greatest place of honor is really the place of service.

The greatest discovery in life, the most precious treasure, is of awareness. Without it you are bound to be in darkness, full of fears. And you will go on creating new fears - there is no end to it. You will live in fear, you will die in fear, and you will never be able to taste something of freedom. And it was all the time your potential; any moment you could have claimed it, but you never claimed it.

But, is it possible for princes and ministers to be enlightened, when private individuals are not so?

The objective tendency of the Enlightenment, to wipe out the power of images over man, is not matched by any subjective progress on the part of enlightened thinking towards freedom from images.

Disruption never helps your cause. ... It just looks like you're afraid to have rational discussion.

When the foot of the' mountain is enveloped in mist, the mountain appears to us much loftier than it is; so also when the ground and basis of a disaster is not clear to us.