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

Quality is decided by the depth at which the work incorporates the alternatives within itself, and so masters them.

People have so manipulated the concept of freedom that it finally boils down to the right of the stronger and richer to take from the weaker and poorer whatever they still have.

The usual reproach against the essay, that it is fragmentary and random, itself assumes the givenness of totality and suggests that man is in control of this totality. The desire of the essay, though, is not to filter the eternal out of the transitory; it wants, rather, to make the transitory eternal.

The inadequacy of the purely purpose-oriented form is revealed for what it is-a monotonous, impoverished boring practicality.

The idea that after this war life will continue 'normally' or even that culture might be 'rebuilt' - as if the rebuilding of culture were not already its negation - is idiotic.

Dissonance is the truth about harmony.