Quote

In its relation to the reality of daily life, the high culture of the past was many things opposition and adornment, outcry and resignation. But it was also the appearance of the realm of freedom: the refusal to behave.

Herbert Marcuse

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Herbert Marcuse
Age: 81 †
Born: 1898
Born: July 19
Died: 1979
Died: July 29
Philosopher
Political Theorist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Berlin
Germany
Things
Relation
Resignation
Life
High
Refusal
Freedom
Realm
Culture
Realms
Reality
Opposition
Past
Behave
Also
Appearance
Outcry
Many
Daily
Adornment

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The tangible source of exploitation disappears behind the façade of objective rationality.
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The closed language does not demonstrate and explain it communicates decision, dictum, command. Where it defines, the definition becomes separation of good from evil it establishes unquestionable
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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.
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The avant-garde and the beatniks share in the function of entertaining without endangering the good conscience of the men of good will.
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Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination.
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The unification of opposites which characterizes the commercial and political style is one of the many ways in which discourse and communication make themselves immune against the expression of protest and refusal.
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Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.
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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.
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There is no free society without silence, without the internal and external spaces of solitude in which the individual freedom can develop.
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The ontological concept of truth is in the centre of a logic which may serve as a model of pre- technological rationality. It is the rationality of a two-dimensional universe of discourse which, contrasts with the of thought and behavior that develop in the execution of the technological project.
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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.
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Nobody really thinks who does not abstract from that which is given, who does not relate the facts to the factors which have made them, who does not - in his mind - undo the facts. Abstractness is the very life of thought, the token of its authenticity.
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The sickness of the individual is ultimately caused by and sustained by the sickness of his civilization
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Society ... can afford to grant more than before because its interests have become the innermost drives of its citizens.
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Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left.
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The existing liberties and the existing gratifications are tied to the requirements of repression: they themselves become instruments of repression.
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Technological rationality reveals its political character as it becomes the great vehicle of better domination, creating a truely totalitarian universe in which society and nature, mind and body are kept in a state of permanent mobilization for the defense of this universe.
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