Everything about art has become problematic; its inner life, its relation to society, even its right to exist.

Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people.

Those who cannot help ought also not advise: in an order where every mousehole has been plugged, mere advice exactly equals condemnation.

There is something embarrassing in... the way in which, ... turning suffering into images, harsh and uncompromising though they are, ... wounds the shame we feel in the presence of the victims. For these victims are used to create something, works of art, that are thrown to the consumption of a world which destroyed them.

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

Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

The gods look in pleasure on penitent sinners.