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.

The positive element of kitsch lies in the fact that it sets free for a moment the glimmering realization that you have wasted your life.

The recent past always presents itself as if destroyed by catastrophes.

The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.

The very people who burst with proofs of exuberant vitality could easily be taken for prepared corpses, from whom the news of their not-quite-successful decease has been withheld for reasons of population policy. Underlying the prevalent health is death. All the movements of health resemble the reflex-movements of beings whose hearts have stopped beating.

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

The good man is he who rules himself as he does his own property: his autonomous being is modelled on material power.