Tact is the discrimination of differences. It consists in conscious deviations.

He who has loved and who betrays love does harm not only to the image of the past, but to the past itself.

The specific is not exclusive: it lacks the aspiration to totality.

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

The darkening of the world makes the irrationality of art rational: radically darkened art.

The sublime is only a step removed from the ridiculous.

It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies.