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

Everybody must have projects all the time. The maximum must be extracted from leisure ... The whole of life must look like a job, and by this resemblance conceal what is not yet directly devoted to pecuniary gain.

There's not much need for prophets who are in synch with their society.

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

Kitsch evokes a future utopia looking back at a past that is selectively (mis)remembered, thereby helping to stabilize the present toward which kitsch is otherwise deeply anatagonistic.

For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.

He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest.