Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or his good opinion.

In many people it is already an impertinence to say 'I'.

Thus is order ensured: some have to play the game because they cannot otherwise live, and those who could live otherwise are kept out because they do not want to play the game. It is as if the class from which independent intellectuals have defected takes its revenge, by pressing its demands home in the very domain where the deserter seeks refuge.

No harm comes to man from outside alone: dumbness is the objective spirit.

The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite.

Art is the social antithesis of society, not directly deducible from it.

Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people.