Herbert Marcuse Quotes
Herbert Marcuse was a 20th-century German-American philosopher and a leading figure of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, particularly in its American period. His major works including Reason and Revolution, Eros and Civilization, and One-Dimensional Man (1964) developed a synthesis of Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis to analyse the integration of dissent and the deadening of critical thought in advanced industrial societies. The quotes below are attributed to Herbert Marcuse, organized by topic.
Browse Herbert Marcuse by topic
Herbert Marcuse on Freedom
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Attributed to Herbert Marcuse:
“The most effective and enduring form of warfare against liberation is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete forms of the struggle for existence.”
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“The slaves of developed industrial civilisation are sublimated slaves, but they are slaves.”
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“In conditions of private property … “life-activity” stands in the service of property instead of property standing the service of free life-activity.”
The Foundations of Historical Materialism," Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 32
Herbert Marcuse on Knowledge
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“We hope that the analysis offered here will demonstrate that Hegel ’s basic concepts are hostile to the tendencies that have led into Fascist theory and practice. Preface”
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“German idealism rescued philosophy from the attack of British empiricism , and the struggle between the two became not merely a clash of different philosophical school, but a struggle for philosophy as such. P. 16”
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Herbert Marcuse on Life
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“As the German idealists saw it, the French Revolution not only abolished feudal absolutism , replacing it with the economic and political system of the middle class , but it completed what the German Reformation had begun, emancipating the individual as a self-reliant master of his life. p. 3”
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“Man alone has the power of self-realization, the power to be a self-determining subject in all processes of becoming, for he alone has an understanding of potentialities and a knowledge of ‘notions.’ His very existence is the process of actualizing his potentialities, of molding his life according to the notions of reason. P. 9”
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Herbert Marcuse on Mind
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“Reason and Revolution, Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory , Herbert Marcuse, London Routledge & Kegan Paul LTD 2nd edition 1941, reprinted 1955”
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“Man is a thinking being. His reason enables him to recognize his own potentialities and those of his world. He is thus not at the mercy of the facts that surround him, but is capable of subjecting them to a higher standard, that of reason. P. 6”
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Herbert Marcuse on Nature
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“Bourgeois political economy … never gets to see man who is its real subject. It disregards the essence of man and his history and is thus in the profoundest sense not a ‘ science of people’ but of non-people and of an inhuman world of objects and commodities .”
The Foundations of Historical Materialism,” Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 9
Herbert Marcuse on Politics
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Attributed to Herbert Marcuse:
“Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.”
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Attributed to Herbert Marcuse:
“The people recognise themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.”
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Attributed to Herbert Marcuse:
“Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production.”
Herbert Marcuse on Truth
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Attributed to Herbert Marcuse:
“Art breaks open a dimension inaccessible to other experience.”
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Attributed to Herbert Marcuse:
“One can rightfully speak of a culture of alienation only when the works are not part of the prevailing one.”