Theodor W. Adorno Quotes

I always approach logic without emotion. The math always equals the math. Regardless of whether I discovered the math before anyone else, or I just decided to accept it, I know what logically makes sense, and I'm going to speak on it every time.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

Empathy has some unfortunate features - it is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We're often at our best when we're smart enough not to rely on it.

I'm against sloppy, emotional thinking.

The habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings.

Sometimes if I stick in a character too much I feel like I might start to get blinkered, because I'm making my decisions too definite.

You can go through your whole life telling yourself that life is logical, life is prosaic, life is sane. Above all sane. And I think it is. I've had a lot of time to think about that. And what I keep coming back to is [her] dying declaration: 'So you understand that when we increase the number of variables, the axioms themselves never change.'

Never let your emotions overrule your head.

Smallness of mind is the cause of stubbornness, and we do not credit readily what is beyond our view.

Fear is the most powerful enemy of reason.

It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of God like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don't agree with us.

There is nothing more dangerous than a person with only one right answer.

One can't be of an enquiring and experimental nature, and still be very sensible.

Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?

To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.

Maybe I think too much for my own good.

We cannot escape the clear fact that what is going to win in this world is reason, if this ever becomes a reasonable world.

One of the main faults of a fool is that he never changes his mind.

I think in many ways narrow minded-attitudes lead to extreme thinking.

In short, herein seems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen, that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong propositions, but argue and reason right from them: but idiots make very few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all.

We can't avoid reasoning; we can only avoid doing it well.

Let him make use of instinct who cannot make use of reason.

There is only one force stronger than selfishness, and that is stupidity.

Indu'd With sanctity of reason.

People calculate too much and think too little.