List of Herbert Marcuse Quotes

The Truth Of Literature And Art Has Always Been Granted (if It Was Granted At All) As One Of A "higher" Order, Which Should Not And Indeed Did Not Disturb The Order Of Business. What Has Changed In The Contemporary Period Is The Difference Between The Two Orders And Their Truths. The Absorbent Power Of Society Depletes The Artistic Dimension By Assimilating Its Antagonistic Contents. In The Realm Of Culture, The New Totalitarianism Manifests Itself Precisely In A Harmonizing Pluralism, Where The Most Contradictory Works And Truths Peacefully Coexist In Indifference.

This Is The Pure Form Of Servitude: To Exist As An Instrument.

Reason ... Contradicts The Established Order Of Men And Things On Behalf Of Existing Societal Forces That Reveal The Irrational Character Of This Order For "rational" Is A Mode Of Thought And Action Which Is Geared To Reduce Ignorance, Destruction, Brutality, And Oppression.

Dialectical Logic Undoes The Abstractions Of Formal Logic And Of Transcendental Philosophy, But It Also Denies The Concreteness Of Immediate Experience. To The Extent To Which This Experience Comes To Rest With The Things As They Appear And Happen To Be, It Is A Limited And Even False Experience. It Attains Its Truth If It Has Freed Itself From The Deceptive Objectivity Which Conceals The Factors Behind The Facts - That Is, If It Understands Its World As A Historical Universe, In Which The Established Facts Are The Work Of The Historical Practice Of Man.

To Live One's Love And Hatred, To Live That Which One Is Means Defeat, Resignation, And Death. The Crimes Of Society, The Hell That Man Has Made Or Man Become Unconquerable Cosmic Forces.

In The Form Of The Oeuvre, The Actual Circumstances Are Placed In Another Dimension Where The Given Reality Shows Itself As That Which It Is. Thus It Tells The Truth About Itself; Its Language Ceases To Be That Of Deception, Ignorance, And Submission. Fiction Calls The Facts By Their Name And Their Reign Collapses; Fiction Subverts Everyday Experience And Shows It To Be Mutilated And False.

The Societal Division Of Labor Obtains The Dignity Of An Ontological Condition.

Non-operational Ideas Are Non-behavioral And Subversive. The Movement Of Thought Is Stopped At Barriers Which Appear As The Limits Of Reason Itself.

Ideas, Aspirations, And Objectives That, By Their Content, Transcend The Established Universe Of Discourse And Action Are Either Repelled Or Reduced To Terms Of This Universe.

Our Mass Media Have Little Difficulty In Selling Particular Interests As Those Of All Sensible Men. The Political Needs Of Society Become Individual Needs And Aspirations, Their Satisfaction Promotes Business And The Commonweal, And The Whole Appeals To Be The Very Embodiment Of Reason.

In Conditions Of Private Property ... "life-activity" Stands In The Service Of Property Instead Of Property Standing The Service Of Free Life-activity.

Coming To Life As Classics, They Come To Life As Other Than Themselves; They Are Deprived Of Their Antagonistic Force, Of The Estrangement Which Was The Very Dimension Of Their Truth.