The 70 best famous quotes of Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse was a German-born philosopher and sociologist, whose work gave him a key position within the most prominent thinkers of the Frankfurt School (school of social theory and critical philosophy belonging to the Goethe University of Frankfurt) together with great personalities such as Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl.

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Memorable quotes from Herbert Marcuse

In this article we bring a compilation of the best famous quotes of Herbert Marcuse, to remember his work.

1. The truth of art lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality to define what is real.

Art is used to represent the world.

2. Under the rule of a repressive totality, freedom can become a powerful instrument of domination.

Freedom can be a bargaining chip.

3. The free choice of masters does not suppress either masters or slaves.

On the free choice of each person.

4. Only thanks to those without hope is hope given to us.

Hope can come from anywhere.

5. The death instinct is destructiveness not for its own sake, but for the relief of tension.

There are those who are attracted to the instincts of death.

6. By censoring the unconscious and implanting the consciousness, the superego also censures the censor, because the Developed consciousness registers the forbidden evil act not only in the individual but also in his society of him.

It is not possible to have an ideal society without being able to develop individually.

7. Can one really differentiate between the mass media as instruments of information and entertainment, and as means of manipulation and indoctrination?

The media can be a double-edged sword.

8. The more important the intellectual, the more understanding he will be with the ignorant.

Ignorance is a remediable state, if that is what you want.

9. The possibility of choosing the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of freedom of it, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual.

Freedom means being responsible for our actions.

10. The freedom of politics would mean the liberation of individuals from a politics over which they exercise no effective control.

Every person must have a certain role in politics.

11. Choosing freely from a wide variety of goods and services does not mean freedom if these goods and services services support social controls over a life of effort and fear, that is, if they support the alienation.

On choosing what we want to have.

12. This is the pure form of servitude: to exist as an instrument, as a thing.

In a way, we are slaves of society.

13. I have just suggested that the concept of alienation seems to become questionable when individuals identify with the existence that is imposed on them and in which they find their own development and satisfaction.

For Marcuse, alienation occurs when we stay in our comfort zone.

14. Entertainment and learning are not antagonistic.

We can learn in an entertaining way.

15. There is still the legendary revolutionary hero who can defeat even television and the press: his world is that of underdeveloped countries.

This hero can become a villain.

16. The quantification of nature, which led to the explanation of it in mathematical terms, separated reality and, consequently, separated the true from the good, the science of ethics.

Reflections on the 'need' to check everything we see.

17. Today we have the ability to make the world hell and we are on our way to do so. But we also have the ability to do the opposite.

It is never too late to act for the benefit of our planet.

18. Intellectual freedom would mean the restoration of individual thought now absorbed by mass communication and indoctrination, the abolition of public opinion along with its creators.

Intellectual freedom as freedom of thought.

19. 'Romantic' is a condescending smear term that is easily applied to avant-garde positions.

A very curious opinion on romanticism.

20. The achievements and failures of this society invalidate its high culture.

Every society has good and bad points.

21. In advanced industrial civilization an absence of comfortable, smooth, reasonable and democratic freedom prevails as a sign of technical progress.

The consequences of industrial advance.

22. In this totality, the conceptual distinction between business and politics, profit and prestige, needs and advertising is hardly possible.

Business and the economy are closely related to government.

23. Technology as such cannot be separated from the use made of it.

Technology can be used for different purposes.

24. No matter how peaceful our demonstrations are or will be, we must count on the violence of the institutions to oppose us.

Even if we act with good will, we will not always receive this treatment.

25. All of us who love culture are united by an indissoluble bond.

Culture is one of the main pillars of society.

26. Literature and art were a cognitive rational force that revealed a dimension of man and nature that was repressed and rejected in reality.

Two branches that invite people to question their surroundings.

27. Entertainment can be the most effective way to learn.

Learning must have an attractive and interesting character.

28. The slaves of developed industrial society are sublimated slaves, but they are slaves.

A new kind of slavery.

29. You export a “way of life”, or you export yourself in the dynamics of the whole. With capital, computers and knowledge-living, come the remaining "values": relationships libidinous with merchandise, with aggressive motorized devices, with the false aesthetics of the Supermarket.

Capitalism "offers" a way of life that is difficult to maintain.

30. Domination has its own aesthetic and democratic domination has its democratic aesthetic.

Domination is present in many aspects of life.

31. Technological society is a system of domination that already operates in the concept and construction of techniques.

Now more than ever we can observe how technologies dominate us.

32. Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the establishment, which abuses the duration of its application, not to expressions of its own morality, but to those of another.

Thoughts on obscenity as part of society.

33. Time does not cure everything. But remove the incurable from the central focus.

Time helps us to heal but not to forget.

34. The social organization of the sexual instincts makes practically all its manifestations taboo as perversions that do not serve or prepare for the procreative function.

Talking about demonization towards sexual enjoyment.

35. It is indisputable even the very notion of alienation because this one-dimensional man lacks a dimension capable of demanding and enjoying any progress of his spirit.

The alienation explained by Marcuse, such as the lack of goals and enjoyment.

36. Products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness immune to its falsehood.

There is no doubt that there is an element of manipulation in the products.

37. In the field of culture, the new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a pluralism harmonizing, in which the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in the indifference.

The most convenient for most.

38. All liberation depends on the awareness of bondage, and the emergence of this awareness is hindered always due to the predominance of needs and satisfactions that, to a great degree, have become proper to the individual.

If we are to serve, we must at least choose who we want to serve.

39. The one-dimensional individual is characterized by his delusion of persecution, his internalized paranoia through mass communication systems.

We all have a strong instinct for paranoia because of what we hear in the media.

40. Many things do not deserve to be said and many people do not deserve to be told other things: the result is a lot of silence.

The danger of keeping secrets is that they can explode in a very bad way.

41. Without the severest limitations, they would counterattack sublimation, on which the growth of culture depends.

Everything needs to have its limit.

42. Autonomy and spontaneity are meaningless in their prefabricated world of prejudices and preconceived opinions.

Sometimes independence is condemned by moralism.

43. The tangible source of exploitation disappears behind the facade of objective rationality.

There are 'benefits' that are an excuse for greater control.

44. The principle of reality is materialized in a system of institutions.

Institutions have the power to establish what is and is not.

45. Liberating tolerance, then, means intolerance of the movements of the right and tolerance of the movements of the left.

The left as favoritism of democracy?

46. The judgment that human life deserves to be lived, or rather that it can be and should be done.

Life is what you decide it to be.

47. Closed language does not demonstrate or explain: it communicates decisions, failures, orders.

Closed language is about negative criticism and outrageous demands.

48. Culture demands continual sublimation; therefore, it weakens Eros, the builder of culture.

Culture forces us to act correctly.

49. The decisive difference lies in the reduction of the contrast (or conflict) between the given and the possible; between the needs satisfied and the needs to be satisfied. And it is here that the so-called leveling of class distinctions reveals its ideological function.

Reflections on our wants and needs.

50. The individual, growing up within such a system, learns the requirements of the reality principle, such as those of law and order, and passes them on to the next generation.

We all need the regulations of society to be able to act in it.

51. All tolerance for the left, none for the right.

His position was very clear.

52. The libido is diverted to act in a socially useful way, within which the individual works for himself only in so much that he works for the apparatus, and is engaged in activities that generally do not coincide with his own faculties and wishes.

The libido transformed into a mere need for reproduction and not as intimate enjoyment.

53. The productive apparatus, and the goods and services it produces, "sell" or impose the social system as a whole.

Advertising sells us things that we don't necessarily need.

54. Ultimately, the question of what are true or false needs can only be resolved by individuals themselves, but only ultimately; that is, as long as they are free to give their own answer.

Everyone knows what he wants in his life, although at first it may be confusing.

55. When you define, the definition becomes "separation of good and bad"; it establishes what is right and wrong without allowing doubts, and one value as justification for another.

About the moralism of some people.

56. The restoration of memory rights is a vehicle for liberation.

Speaking of freedom of thought.

57. The apparatus defeats its own purpose, because its purpose is to create a human existence on the basis of a humanized nature.

There is no way to suppress the human spirit.

58. Policymakers and their mass information providers consistently promote one-dimensional thinking.

Every politician seeks to spread his totalitarian message.

59. ⁠What distinguishes pleasure from the blind satisfaction of wants and needs is the rejection of the instinct to run out of immediate satisfaction, is your ability to build and use barriers to intensify the act of realization full.

The difference between wants and needs.

60. Without releasing the repressed content of memory, without releasing its liberating power; non-repressive sublimation is unimaginable.

The repression of thought is the repression of being.

61. The spontaneous reproduction, by individuals, of superimposed needs does not establish autonomy; it only tests the effectiveness of the controls.

When we see control as natural.

62. And in literature, this other dimension is not represented by religious, spiritual, moral heroes (who often uphold the established order), but rather by the disturbing characters (...) that is, by those who do not earn a living or at least do not do it in an orderly and normal.

Literature as a reflection of real people in their everyday situations.

63. ⁠Today, domination is perpetuated and spreads not only through technology, but as technology, and this guarantees the great legitimation of the growing political power that absorbs all spheres of the culture.

We can say that this became a prediction of the future.

64. Time loses its power when memory refers to the past.

When memories come, it is impossible to stop them.

65. According to Freud's conception, the equation of freedom and happiness, made taboo by the conscious, is supported by the unconscious.

Quoting Freud.

66. Not all the problems someone has with his girlfriend are necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production.

Talking about how many blame capitalism for their problems.

67. ⁠When fulfilling its mission, the main role of the ego is to coordinate, alter, organize and control the instinctual impulses of the id, in order to minimize conflicts with reality; it represses impulses incompatible with reality, reconciles others with reality, changes its object, delays or diverts its gratification.

Talking about the role of the I in human beings, as a mediating element.

68. While the fight for truth "saves" reality from destruction, truth pawns and compromises human existence.

The truth is not always beneficial.

69. The liberating force of technology - the instrumentalization of things - becomes a chain of liberation; the instrumentalization of man.

The price of technology facilitation.

70. It is the essentially human project. If man has learned to see and know what he really is, he will act in accordance with the truth.

The ideal way to live is by knowing ourselves.