{ "type": "book", "site": { "name": "Leafy Quotes", "language": "en", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com" }, "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.", "title": "One-Dimensional Man", "slug": "one-dimensional-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man", "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man.json", "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man.md", "author": { "name": "Herbert Marcuse", "slug": "herbert-marcuse", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse" }, "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/beacon-press/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man_978-08-0701-417-2.jpg", "quotes_count": 57, "quotes": [ { "id": "f2017e75-2ad2-4d14-8df2-6b27acef81c4", "slug": "if-man-has", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/if-man-has", "text": "If man has learned to see and know what really is, he will act in accordance with truth, Epistemology is in itself ethics, and ethics is epistemology.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 125, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "morality", "slug": "morality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "f15b56dc-50c3-43d6-b1d7-8fc1605fec36", "slug": "the-precarious-ontological", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-precarious-ontological", "text": "The precarious ontological link between Logos and Eros is broken, and scientific rationality emerges as essentially neutral.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 147, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "ef0c1e08-96bb-4861-bc5a-e79c2f1fcd01", "slug": "nobody-really-thinks", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/nobody-really-thinks", "text": "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.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 134, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "thinking", "slug": "thinking", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/thinking" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "ead0c041-6a14-4761-821f-8b11c3a58072", "slug": "the-happy-consciousness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-happy-consciousness", "text": "The happy consciousness is shaky enough—a thin surface over fear, frustration, and disgust.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 76, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "fear", "slug": "fear", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/fear" }, { "name": "happiness", "slug": "happiness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/happiness" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "e5d5433d-f4f1-4524-8f94-62d52949877f", "slug": "the-society-which", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-society-which", "text": "the society which projects and undertakes the technological transformation of nature alters the base of domination by gradually replacing personal dependence (of the slave on the master, the serf on the lord of the manor, the lord on the donor of the fief, etc.) with dependence on the “objective order of things” (on economic laws, the market etc.).", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 144, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "power", "slug": "power", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power" }, { "name": "economy", "slug": "economy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/economy" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "d8f3e1e5-2a32-4038-909e-9e40ac55da27", "slug": "reason-contradicts-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/reason-contradicts-the", "text": "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.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 141, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reason", "slug": "reason", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reason" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "c062d0ac-c47f-429c-8e54-e884ac7a35a6", "slug": "when-the-whole", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/when-the-whole", "text": "When the whole is at stake, there is no crime except that of rejecting the whole, or not defending it. … Those who identify themselves with the whole, who are installed as the leaders and defenders of the whole can make mistakes, but they cannot do wrong—they are not guilty. They may become guilty again when this identification no longer holds, when they are gone.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 82, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "power", "slug": "power", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power" }, { "name": "guilt", "slug": "guilt", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/guilt" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "b27939e6-eddc-4424-8c8e-ebd5d51c7185", "slug": "the-superego-in-censoring", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-superego-in-censoring", "text": "The Superego, in censoring the unconscious and in implanting conscience, also censors the censor.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 76, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "conscience", "slug": "conscience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/conscience" }, { "name": "psychology", "slug": "psychology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/psychology" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "afab936d-5836-40b7-b808-96e50eb3a5a2", "slug": "in-its-relation", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/in-its-relation", "text": "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.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 71, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "freedom", "slug": "freedom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom" }, { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "aa34be65-e929-4e30-9b27-a983ed0891de", "slug": "the-world-of-immediate", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-world-of-immediate", "text": "The world of immediate experience—the world in which we find ourselves living—must be comprehended, transformed, even subverted in order to become that which it really is.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 123, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reality", "slug": "reality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reality" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "a669a0cd-b6fb-4b0c-a1b4-992993051d6d", "slug": "the-people-are", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-people-are", "text": "The people are led to find in the productive apparatus the effective agent of thought and action to which their personal thought and action can and must be surrendered. And in this transfer, the apparatus also assumes the role of a moral agent. Conscience is absolved by reification.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 79, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" }, { "name": "conscience", "slug": "conscience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/conscience" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "a51a672c-28bd-4130-bc46-3f566440cd74", "slug": "the-philosopher-subjects", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-philosopher-subjects", "text": "The philosopher … subjects experience to his critical judgment, and this contains a value judgment — namely, that freedom from toil is preferable to toil, and an intelligent life is preferable to a stupid life. It so happened that philosophy was born with these values. Scientific thought had to break this union of value judgment and analysis, for it became increasingly clear that the philosophic values did not guide the organisation of society.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 126, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "philosophy", "slug": "philosophy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/philosophy" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "739117f6-33f6-498f-b578-552a6781e89b", "slug": "the-liberating-force", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-liberating-force", "text": "The liberating force of technology—the instrumentalization of things—turns into … the instrumentalization of man.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 159, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "71cee659-1488-4582-853f-eb94b3b041a1", "slug": "society-can-afford", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/society-can-afford", "text": "Society … can afford to grant more than before because its interests have become the innermost drives of its citizens.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 72, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "manipulation", "slug": "manipulation", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/manipulation" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "6b9854f2-584e-45c9-a275-85f22543a25a", "slug": "the-closed-language", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-closed-language", "text": "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", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 101, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "language", "slug": "language", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/language" }, { "name": "propaganda", "slug": "propaganda", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/propaganda" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "47610536-6658-4b5f-8143-21f305aaa6a0", "slug": "freed-from-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/freed-from-the", "text": "Freed from the sublimated form which was the very token of its irreconcilable dreams—a form which is the style, the language in which the story is told—sexuality turns into a vehicle for the bestsellers of oppression. … This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and of exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression. Sexuality is no exception.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 77, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "sex", "slug": "sex", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/sex" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "43e4290e-b1bb-48ec-abc9-70525f08099a", "slug": "the-range-of-socially", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-range-of-socially", "text": "The range of socially permissible and desirable satisfaction is greatly enlarged, but through this satisfaction, the Pleasure Principle is reduced—deprived of the claims which are irreconcilable with the established society. Pleasure, thus adjusted, generates submission.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 75, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "pleasure", "slug": "pleasure", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/pleasure" }, { "name": "obedience", "slug": "obedience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/obedience" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "2e9e9467-b3bb-44e9-8180-f929a70f6fbc", "slug": "the-soul-contains", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-soul-contains", "text": "The soul contains few secrets and longings which cannot be sensibly discussed, analyzed, and polled. Solitude, the very condition which sustained the individual against and beyond his society, has become technically impossible. Logical and linguistic analysis demonstrate that the old metaphysical problems are illusory problems; the quest for the “meaning” of things can be reformulated as the quest for the meaning of words, and the established universe of discourse and behavior can provide perfectly adequate criteria for the answer.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 71, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "loneliness", "slug": "loneliness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/loneliness" }, { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "1f134715-b974-418a-9cf7-00dc55188853", "slug": "the-apparatus-defeats", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-apparatus-defeats", "text": "The apparatus defeats its own purpose if its purpose is to create a humane existence on the basis of a humanized nature.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 145, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "107f08c6-a6e0-4a8e-9028-84eaf7aad011", "slug": "is-this-fight", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/is-this-fight", "text": "Is this fight against history part of the fight against a dimension of the mind in which centrifugal faculties and forces might develop—faculties and forces that might hinder the total coordination of the individual with the society? Remembrance of the Fast may give rise to dangerous insights, and the established society seems to be apprehensive of the subversive contents of memory. Remembrance is a mode of dissociation from the given facts, a mode of “mediation” which breaks, for short moments, the omnipresent power of the given facts. Memory recalls the terror and the hope that passed. Both come to life again", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 98, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" }, { "name": "memory", "slug": "memory", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/memory" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "0f8c3d4a-65ec-473a-b8fe-082b06c0421e", "slug": "this-language-controls", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/this-language-controls", "text": "This language controls by reducing the linguistic forms and symbols of reflection, abstraction, development, contradiction; by substituting images for concepts. It denies or absorbs the transcendent vocabulary; it does not search for but establishes and imposes truth and falsehood.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 103, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "language", "slug": "language", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/language" }, { "name": "propaganda", "slug": "propaganda", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/propaganda" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "02c430f9-d2ed-4cc8-90b1-0101cbbe0bde", "slug": "operational-analysis-cannot", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/operational-analysis-cannot", "text": "Operational analysis … cannot raise the decisive question whether the consent itself was not the work of manipulation—a question for which the actual state of affairs provides ample justification. The analysis cannot raise it because it would transcend its terms toward transitive meaning—toward a concept of democracy which would reveal the democratic election as a rather limited democratic process. Precisely such a non-operational concept is the one rejected by the authors as “unrealistic” because it defines democracy on too articulate a level as the clear-cut control of representation by the electorate—popular control as popular sovereignty.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 116, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "democracy", "slug": "democracy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/democracy" }, { "name": "manipulation", "slug": "manipulation", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/manipulation" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:39" }, { "id": "fa1a6057-585f-4b44-821b-1001ab15462c", "slug": "in-the-most", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/in-the-most", "text": "In the most advanced areas of this civilization, the social controls have been introjected to the point where even individual protest is affected at its roots. The intellectual and emotional refusal “to go along” appears neurotic and impotent. This is the socio-psychological aspect of the political event that marks the contemporary period: the passing of the historical forces which, at the preceding stage of industrial society, seemed to represent the possibility of new forms of existence. But the term “introjection” perhaps no longer describes the way in which the individual by himself reproduces and perpetuates the external controls exercised by his society. Introjection suggests a variety of relatively spontaneous processes by which a Self (Ego) transposes the “outer” into the “inner.” Thus introjection implies the existence of an inner dimension distinguished from and even antagonistic to the external exigencies—an individual consciousness and an individual unconscious apart from public opinion and behavior. The idea of “inner freedom” here has its reality: it designates the private space in which man may become and remain “himself.” Today this private space has been invaded and whittled down by technological reality. Mass production and mass distribution claim the entire individual, and industrial psychology has long since ceased to be confined to the factory. The manifold processes of introjection seem to be ossified in almost mechanical reactions. The result is, not adjustment but mimesis: an immediate identification of the individual with his society and, through it, with the society as a whole. This immediate, automatic identification (which may have been characteristic of primitive forms of association) reappears in high industrial civilization; its new “immediacy,” however, is the product of a sophisticated, scientific management and organization. In this process, the “inner” dimension of the mind in which opposition to the status quo can take root is whittled down. The loss of this dimension, in which the power of negative thinking—the critical power of Reason—is at home, is the ideological counterpart to the very material process in which advanced industrial society silences and reconciles the opposition. The impact of progress turns Reason into submission to the facts of life, and to the dynamic capability of producing more and bigger facts of the same sort of life. The efficiency of the system blunts the individuals' recognition that it contains no facts which do not communicate the repressive power of the whole. If the individuals find themselves in the things which shape their life, they do so, not by giving, but by accepting the law of things—not the law of physics but the law of their society.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 9, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "conformity", "slug": "conformity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/conformity" }, { "name": "rebellion", "slug": "rebellion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/rebellion" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "f0bdbd8a-cf35-4b79-addd-ce4e83ae74e9", "slug": "society-is-eliminating", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/society-is-eliminating", "text": "Society is eliminating the prerogatives and privileges of feudal. aristocratic culture together with its content. The fact that the transcending truths of the fine arts, the aesthetics of life and thought, were accessible only to the few wealthy and educated was the fault of a repressive society. But this fault is not corrected by paperbacks, general education, long-playing records, and the abolition of formal dress in the theater and concert hall. The cultural privileges expressed the injustice of freedom, the contradiction between ideology and reality, the separation of intellectual from material productivity; but they also provided a protected realm in which the tabooed truths could survive in abstract integrity—remote from the society which suppressed them.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 64, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "education", "slug": "education", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/education" }, { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "e90b21d9-4dfa-4fed-9174-79fbc0209986", "slug": "ideas-aspirations-and", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/ideas-aspirations-and", "text": "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.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 12, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "ideas", "slug": "ideas", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/ideas" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "d8ad3cce-46ea-4667-a58c-0992d74058b2", "slug": "paul-valery-insists", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/paul-valery-insists", "text": "Paul Valéry insists on the inescapable commitment of the poetic language to the negation. The verses of this language “ne parlent jamais que de choses absentes.” They speak of that which, though absent, haunts the established universe of discourse and behavior as its most tabooed possibility—neither heaven nor hell, neither good nor evil but simply “le bonheur.”", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 67, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "happiness", "slug": "happiness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/happiness" }, { "name": "poetry", "slug": "poetry", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/poetry" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "d439e541-4273-4206-8247-07d56288305b", "slug": "all-liberation-depends", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/all-liberation-depends", "text": "All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude, and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions which, to a great extent, have become the individual's own.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 7, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "freedom", "slug": "freedom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom" }, { "name": "slavery", "slug": "slavery", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/slavery" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "d2997285-f035-4bbf-a4c8-c6e3ecab2c34", "slug": "man-today-can", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/man-today-can", "text": "Man today can do more than the culture heros and half-gods; he has solved many insoluble problems. But he has also betrayed the hope and destroyed the truth which were preserved in the sublimations of higher culture. To be sure, the higher culture was always in contradiction with social reality, and only a privileged minority enjoyed its blessings and represented its ideals. The two antagonistic spheres of society have always coexisted; the higher culture has always been accommodating, while the reality was rarely disturbed by its ideals and its truth. Today's novel feature is the flattening out of the antagonism between culture and social reality through the obliteration of the oppositional, alien, and transcendent elements in the higher culture by virtue of which it constituted another dimension of reality. This liquidation of two-dimensional culture takes place not through the denial and rejection of the “cultural values,” but through their wholesale incorporation into the established order, through their reproduction and display on a massive scale.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 56, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "cbcb92f3-2312-468e-92a0-6bd9ad36db21", "slug": "in-the-form", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/in-the-form", "text": "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.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 62, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "b576558e-497d-4248-b727-47411fecf719", "slug": "they-great-works", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/they-great-works", "text": "They [great works of literature] are invalidated not because of their literary obsolescence. Some of these images pertain to contemporary literature and survive in its most advanced creations. What has been invalidated is their subversive force, their destructive content—their truth. In this transformation, they find their home in everyday living. The alien and alienating oeuvres of intellectual culture become familiar goods and services. Is their massive reproduction and consumption only a change in quantity, namely, growing appreciation and understanding, democratization of culture? 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. Prior to the advent of this cultural reconciliation, literature and art were essentially alienation, sustaining and protecting the contradiction—the unhappy consciousness of the divided world, the defeated possibilities, the hopes unfulfilled, and the promises betrayed. They were a rational, cognitive force, revealing a dimension of man and nature which was repressed and repelled in reality.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 60, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "literature", "slug": "literature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/literature" }, { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "b5504684-03d6-427d-a098-ad178cae6f51", "slug": "the-neo-conservative-critics", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-neo-conservative-critics", "text": "The neo-conservative critics of leftist critics of mass culture ridicule the protest against Bach as background music in the kitchen, against Plato and Hegel, Shelley and Baudelaire, Marx and Freud in the drugstore. Instead, they insist on recognition of the fact that the classics have left the mausoleum and come to life again, that people are just so much more educated. True, but 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.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 64, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" }, { "name": "consumerism", "slug": "consumerism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/consumerism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "b2fb1543-d282-4897-ab5f-286be2b2a006", "slug": "the-music-of-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-music-of-the", "text": "The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value counts. On it centers the rationality of the status quo, and all alien rationality is bent to It.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 57, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "music", "slug": "music", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/music" }, { "name": "capitalism", "slug": "capitalism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/capitalism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "b27b6fc5-ca43-490e-b916-a8111ceaf875", "slug": "if-the-individual", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/if-the-individual", "text": "If the individual were no longer compelled to prove himself on the market, as a free economic subject, the disappearance of this kind of freedom would be one of the greatest achievements of civilization. The technological processes of mechanization and standardization might release individual energy into a yet uncharted realm of freedom beyond necessity. The very structure of human existence would be altered; the individual would be liberated from the work world's imposing upon him alien needs and alien possibilities. The individual would be free to exert autonomy over a life that would be his own.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 2, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "freedom", "slug": "freedom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom" }, { "name": "work", "slug": "work", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/work" }, { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "acd4b324-6d4f-455e-a28a-c4b7f4b1a35a", "slug": "the-tangible-source", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-tangible-source", "text": "The tangible source of exploitation disappears behind the façade of objective rationality.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 32, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "capitalism", "slug": "capitalism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/capitalism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "a19d192d-96fe-499c-927a-06f5f343934b", "slug": "the-avant-garde-and", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-avant-garde-and", "text": "The avant-garde and the beatniks share in the function of entertaining without endangering the good conscience of the men of good will.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 70, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "art", "slug": "art", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/art" }, { "name": "irony", "slug": "irony", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/irony" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "a129fd93-5c3a-4f55-bf9e-c4813693227a", "slug": "the-capabilities-intellectual", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-capabilities-intellectual", "text": "The capabilities (intellectual and material) of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than ever before—which means that the scope of society's domination over the individual is immeasurably greater than ever before. Our society distinguishes itself by conquering the centrifugal social forces with Technology rather than Terror, on the dual basis of an overwhelming efficiency and an increasing standard of living.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "power", "slug": "power", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power" }, { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "91d8df35-1510-413e-a748-9b77e40b1352", "slug": "the-slaves-of-developed", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-slaves-of-developed", "text": "The slaves of developed industrial civilization are sublimated slaves.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 32, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "slavery", "slug": "slavery", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/slavery" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "89f758b5-aff9-4f64-814a-f1a32709f6e6", "slug": "we-are-again", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/we-are-again", "text": "We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, … the extent to which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man's mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 9, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "763d51e3-b78a-44e4-b9a8-ab5b4e21ffc5", "slug": "no-matter-how", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/no-matter-how", "text": "No matter how close and familiar the temple or cathedral were to the people who lived around them, they remained in terrifying or elevating contrast to the daily life of the slave, the peasant, and the artisan—and perhaps even to that of their masters. Whether ritualized or not, art contains the rationality of negation. In its advanced positions, it is the Great Refusal—the protest against that which is. The modes in which man and things are made to appear, to sing and sound and speak, are modes of refuting, breaking, and recreating their factual existence. But these modes of negation pay tribute to the antagonistic society to which they are linked. Separated from the sphere of labor where society reproduces itself and its misery, the world of art which they create remains, with all its truth, a privilege and an illusion. In this form it continues, in spite of all democratization and popularization, through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The “high culture” in which this alienation is celebrated has its own rites and its own style. The salon, the concert, opera. theater are designed to create and invoke another dimension of reality. Their attendance requires festive-like preparation; they cut off and transcend everyday experience. Now this essential gap between the arts and the order of the day, kept open in the artistic alienation, is progressively closed by the advancing technological society. And with its closing, the Great Refusal is in turn refused; the “other dimension” is absorbed into the prevailing state of affairs. The works of alienation are themselves incorporated into this society and circulate as part and parcel of the equipment which adorns and psychoanalyzes the prevailing state of affairs.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 63, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "art", "slug": "art", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/art" }, { "name": "rebellion", "slug": "rebellion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/rebellion" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "754bd1f4-0d6b-44fb-9e71-632caae11964", "slug": "this-is-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/this-is-the", "text": "This is the pure form of servitude: to exist as an instrument.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 33, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "slavery", "slug": "slavery", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/slavery" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "70d5ad0a-7981-4a43-91bb-2c45e516d7d0", "slug": "under-the-rule", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/under-the-rule", "text": "Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 7, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "power", "slug": "power", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power" }, { "name": "freedom", "slug": "freedom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "5da345a5-b1d9-4b9e-9803-2024fec754ae", "slug": "art-can-speak", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/art-can-speak", "text": "[Art] can speak its own language only as long as the images are alive which refuse and refute the established order.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 62, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "art", "slug": "art", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/art" }, { "name": "rebellion", "slug": "rebellion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/rebellion" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "5d482494-4cd3-48ce-9206-5b018b8c601b", "slug": "the-intellectual-is-called", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-intellectual-is-called", "text": "The intellectual is called on the carpet. ... Don't you conceal something? You talk a language which is suspect. You don't talk like the rest of us, like the man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your tricks, purge you.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 192, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "intellectuals", "slug": "intellectuals", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/intellectuals" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "4053dac2-836a-4c5a-a195-ba3ccf9d1ece", "slug": "entertainment-and-learning", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/entertainment-and-learning", "text": "Entertainment and learning are not opposites; entertainment may be the most effective mode of learning.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 66, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "education", "slug": "education", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/education" }, { "name": "play", "slug": "play", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/play" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "345616cb-91c2-46c3-a3ef-51c5297a8924", "slug": "in-which-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/in-which-the", "text": "In which the technical apparatus of production and distribution (with an increasing sector of automation) functions, not as the sum-total of mere instruments which can be isolated from their social and political effects, but rather as a system which determines a priori the product of the apparatus as well as the operations of servicing and extending it. In this society, the productive apparatus tends to become totalitarian to the extent to which it determines not only the socially needed occupations, skills, and attitudes, but also individual needs and aspirations. It thus obliterates the Opposition between the private and public existence, between individual and social needs.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "power", "slug": "power", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power" }, { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "32ae70c6-dffd-443a-98b0-e96d31cb91fa", "slug": "this-mutual-dependencies", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/this-mutual-dependencies", "text": "This mutual dependencies no longer the dialectical relationship between master and servant, which has been broken in the struggle for mutual recognition, but rather a vicious circle which encloses both the master and the servant. Do the technicians rule, or is their rule that of the others, who rely on the technicians as their planners and executors?", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 33, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "power", "slug": "power", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power" }, { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "2bb97d9a-a25e-4f55-a49c-9948e07170ad", "slug": "the-distinction-between", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-distinction-between", "text": "The distinction between true and false consciousness, real and immediate interest still is meaningful. But this distinction itself must be validated. Men must come to see it and to find their way from false to true consciousness, from their immediate to their real interest. They can do so only if they live in need of changing their way of life, of denying the positive, of refusing. It is precisely this need which the established society manages to repress to the degree to which it is capable of “delivering the goods” on an increasingly large scale, and using the scientific conquest of nature for the scientific conquest of man.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "truth", "slug": "truth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/truth" }, { "name": "manipulation", "slug": "manipulation", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/manipulation" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "26ade02b-8542-4a48-849c-31b31c2dd2b5", "slug": "the-spontaneous-reproduction", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-spontaneous-reproduction", "text": "The spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the control.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 8, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "manipulation", "slug": "manipulation", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/manipulation" }, { "name": "independence", "slug": "independence", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/independence" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "17a9d768-d90a-4340-b375-d3b42992cf70", "slug": "the-judgment-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-judgment-that", "text": "The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living, … underlies all intellectual effort; it is the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "philosophy", "slug": "philosophy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/philosophy" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "14a6005f-703a-4e61-87c2-db6eb78e3e60", "slug": "ascending-modern-rationalism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/ascending-modern-rationalism", "text": "Ascending modern rationalism, in its speculative as well as empirical form, shows a striking contrast between extreme critical radicalism in scientific and philosophic method on the one hand, and an uncritical quietism in the attitude toward established and functioning social institutions. Thus Descartes' ego cogitans was to leave the “great public bodies” untouched, and Hobbes held that “the present ought always to be preferred, maintained, and accounted best.” Kant agreed with Locke in justifying revolution if and when it has succeeded in organizing the whole and in preventing subversion. However, these accommodating concepts of Reason were always contradicted by the evident misery and injustice of the “great public bodies” and the effective, more or less conscious rebellion against them. Societal conditions existed which provoked and permitted real dissociation. from the established state of affairs; a private as well as political dimension was present in which dissociation could develop into effective opposition, testing its strength and the validity of its objectives. With the gradual closing of this dimension by the society, the self-limitation of thought assumes a larger significance. The interrelation between scientific-philosophical and societal processes, between theoretical and practical Reason, asserts itself \"behind the back” of the scientists and philosophers. The society bars a whole type of oppositional operations and behavior; consequently, the concepts pertaining to them are rendered illusory or meaningless. Historical transcendence appears as metaphysical transcendence, not acceptable to science and scientific thought. The operational and behavioral point of view, practiced as a “habit of thought” at large, becomes the view of the established universe of discourse and action, needs and aspirations. The “cunning of Reason” works, as it so often did, in the interest of the powers that be. The insistence on operational and behavioral concepts turns against the efforts to free thought and behavior from the given reality and for the suppressed alternatives.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 15, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reason", "slug": "reason", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reason" }, { "name": "philosophy", "slug": "philosophy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/philosophy" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "118ca81e-318d-4bc1-9126-f92afd609c9a", "slug": "as-the-great", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/as-the-great", "text": "As the great words of freedom and fulfillment are pronounced by campaigning leaders and politicians, on the screens and radios and stages, they turn into meaningless sounds which obtain meaning only in the context of propaganda, business, discipline, and relaxation. This assimilation of the ideal with reality testifies to the extent to which the ideal has been surpassed. It is brought down from the sublimated realm of the soul or the spirit or the inner man, and translated into operational terms and problems. Here are the progressive elements of mass culture. The perversion is indicative of the fact that advanced industrial society is confronted with the possibility of a materialization of ideals. The capabilities of this society are progressively reducing the sublimated realm in which the condition of man was represented, idealized, and indicted. Higher culture becomes part of the material culture. In this transformation, it loses the greater part of its truth.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 57, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" }, { "name": "propaganda", "slug": "propaganda", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/propaganda" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "0f8ea184-b976-41e1-92f2-df346b25f78d", "slug": "the-higher-culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-higher-culture", "text": "The higher culture of the West—whose moral, aesthetic, and intellectual values industrial society still professes—was a pre-technological culture in a functional as well as chronological sense. Its validity was derived from the experience of a world which no longer exists and which cannot be recaptured because it is in a strict sense invalidated by technological society. Moreover, it remained to a large degree a feudal culture, even when the bourgeois period gave it some of its most lasting formulations. It was feudal not only because of its confinement to privileged minorities, not only because of its inherent romantic element (which will be discussed presently), but also because its authentic works expressed a conscious, methodical alienation from the entire sphere of business and industry, and from its calculable and profitable order.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 58, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" }, { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "0ded64f2-40b0-4d23-ba3d-a6851023c862", "slug": "the-category-society", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-category-society", "text": "The category “society” itself expressed the acute conflict between the social and political sphere—society as antagonistic to the state. Similarly, “individual,” “class,” “private,” “family” denoted spheres and forces not yet integrated with the established conditions—spheres of tension and contradiction. With the growing integration of industrial society, these categories are losing their critical connotation, and tend to become descriptive, deceptive, or operational terms. An attempt to recapture the critical intent of these categories, and to understand how the intent was cancelled by the social reality, appears from the outset to be regression from a theory joined with historical practice to abstract, speculative thought: from the critique of political economy to philosophy. This ideological character of the critique results from the fact that the analysis is forced to proceed from a position “outside” the positive as well as negative, the productive as well as destructive tendencies in society.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "philosophy", "slug": "philosophy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/philosophy" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "0ceaaf5f-6e0b-47db-9cf8-857c54e77d35", "slug": "our-mass-media", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/our-mass-media", "text": "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.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "media", "slug": "media", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/media" }, { "name": "propaganda", "slug": "propaganda", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/propaganda" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "08b60148-8625-47b3-8166-0cae00555b8b", "slug": "by-virtue-of-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/by-virtue-of-the", "text": "By virtue of the way it has organized its technological base, contemporary industrial society tends to be totalitarian. For \"totalitarian\" is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic-technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 5, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" }, { "name": "manipulation", "slug": "manipulation", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/manipulation" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "022f7bd4-c2e9-4379-a499-6a197a6648d4", "slug": "domination-has-its", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/domination-has-its", "text": "Domination has its own aesthetics, and democratic domination has its democratic aesthetics.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 65, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "power", "slug": "power", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power" }, { "name": "democracy", "slug": "democracy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/democracy" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "01510822-265c-454f-b357-d2f77d06a902", "slug": "outside-the-academic", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/outside-the-academic", "text": "Outside the academic establishment, the “far-reaching change in all our habits of thought” is more serious. It serves to coordinate ideas and goals with those exacted by the prevailing system, to enclose them in the system, and to repel those which are irreconcilable with the system. The reign of such a one-dimensional reality does not mean that materialism rules, and that the spiritual, metaphysical, and bohemian occupations are petering out. On the contrary, there is a great deal of “Worship together this week,” “Why not try God,” Zen, existentialism, and beat ways of life, etc. But such modes of protest and transcendence are no longer contradictory to the status quo and no longer negative. They are rather the ceremonial part of practical behaviorism, its harmless negation, and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of its healthy diet.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 13, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "conformity", "slug": "conformity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/conformity" }, { "name": "rebellion", "slug": "rebellion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/rebellion" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" } ] }