The welfare state that is built upon this conception seems to prove precisely away from the conservative conception of authoritative and personal government, towards a labyrinthine privilege sodden structure of anonymous power, structuring a citizenship that is increasingly reluctant to answer for itself, increasingly parasitic on the dispensations of a bureaucracy towards which it can feel no gratitude.

States are more like people than they are like anything else: they exist by purpose, reason, suffering, and joy. And peace between states is also like peace between people. It involves the willing renunciation of purpose, in the mutual desire not to do, but to be.

Modern art was born from a desire to destroy kitsch.

Beauty is assailed from two directions - by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.

There is a sort of mystery to kitsch. When did it begin? If it is just simply another name for faking emotions, it ought to have been a permanent part of the human condition.

Being unpopular is never easy; but being unpopular in a good cause is a shield against despair.

There is a crucial distinction to be made between innovation and originality. The second, unlike the first, can never break with what preceded it: to be original, an artist must also belong to the tradition from which he departs. To put it another way, he must violate the expectations of his audience, but he must also, in countless ways, uphold and endorse them.