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.

One must have tradition in oneself, to hate it properly.

Even the loveliest dream bears like a blemish its difference from reality, the awareness that what it grants is mere illusion.

A successful work of art is not one which resolves objective contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure.

Only a humanity to whom death has become as indifferent as its members, that has itself died, can inflict it administratively on innumerable people.

Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.