Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself.

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

The differences between revolution in art and revolution in politics are enormous. Revolution in art lies not in the will to destroy but in the revelation of what has already been destroyed. Art kills only the dead.

The aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of art, but to release himself from it in order to replace it with his own history.

Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause -it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out.

American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.

The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight.