Instrumental Rationality Quotes

“All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“[Both high art and industrially produced consumer art] bear the stigmata of capitalism, both contain elements of change. Both are torn halves of an integral freedom, to which, however, they do not add up.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetics and Politics

“Paradoxically, a society that, in the face of starvation in great areas of
the world, allows a large part of its machinery to stand idle, that shelves
many important inventions, and that devotes innumerable working
hours to moronic advertising and to the production of instruments of
destruction—a society in which these luxuries are inherent has made
usefulness its gospel.”
― Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason