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.

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

The most powerful person is he who is able to do least himself and burden others most with the things for which he lends his name and pockets the credit.

The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.

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 human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings.

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