A successful work of art is not one which resolves objective contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure.

Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.

Dissonance is the truth about harmony.

The objective tendency of the Enlightenment, to wipe out the power of images over man, is not matched by any subjective progress on the part of enlightened thinking towards freedom from images.

Thinking no longer means anymore than checking at each moment whether one can indeed think.

There's not much need for prophets who are in synch with their society.

The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.