Theodor Adorno Quotes about Lying

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A German is someone who cannot tell a lie without believing it himself.

A German is someone who cannot tell a lie without believing it himself.

Theodor Adorno

Lying, Believe

Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.110, Verso

It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies.

Theodor Adorno

Lying, Thinking, Ideas

Indeed, happiness is nothing other than being encompassed, an after-image of the original shelter within the mother. But for this reason no one who is happy can know that he is so. To see happiness, he would have to pass out of it: to be as if already born. He who says he is happy lies, and in invoking happiness, sins against it. He alone keeps faith who says: I was happy.

Theodor Adorno

Mother, Lying, Shelter

Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.112, Verso

The positive element of kitsch lies in the fact that it sets free for a moment the glimmering realization that you have wasted your life.

Theodor Adorno

Lying, Elements, Realization

Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.363, Univ of California Press

The lie has long since lost its honest function of misrepresenting reality. Nobody believes anybody, everyone is in the know. Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or his good opinion.

Theodor Adorno

Lying, Believe, Reality

Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.30, Verso

There are no more ideologies in the authentic sense of false consciousness, only advertisements for the world through its duplication and the provocative lie which does not seek belief but commands silence.

Theodor Adorno

Lying, Silence, Doe

Theodor W. Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann (2003). “Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader”, p.161, Stanford University Press