Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of the men and women who could change the world.

The truth of art lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality to define what is real.

Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production.

This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression.

The functional language is a radically anti-historical language: operational rationality has little room and little use for historical reason.

Freedom of enterprise was from the beginning not altogether a blessing. As the liberty to work or to starve, it spelled toil, insecurity, and fear for the vast majority of the population. If the individual were no longer compelled to prove himself on the market, as a free economic subject, the disappearance of this freedom would be one of the greatest achievements of civilization.

If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator -- the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts.