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

Fascism is itself less 'ideological', in so far as it openly proclaims the principle of domination that is elsewhere concealed.

In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew.

In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.

Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely. Critical intelligence cannot be equal to this challenge as long as it confines itself to self-satisfied contemplation.

Dialectic thought is an attempt to break through the coercion of logic by its own means.

The task of art today is to bring chaos into order. Artistic productivity is the capacity for being voluntarily involuntary.