The need to let suffering speak is a condition of all truth. For suffering is objectivity that weighs upon the subject

As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities.

In his state of complete powerlessness the individual perceives the time he has left to live as a brief reprieve.

That all men are alike is exactly what society would like to hear. It considers actual or imagined differences as stigmas indicating that not enough has yet been done; that something has still been left outside its machinery, not quite determined by its totality.

Of the world as it exists, it is not possible to be enough afraid.

The positive element of kitsch lies in the fact that it sets free for a moment the glimmering realization that you have wasted your life.

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.