He who has laughter on his side has no need of proof.

The sublime is only a step removed from the ridiculous.

In many people it is already an impertinence to say 'I'.

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

The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite.

Freud made the discovery- quite genuinely, simply through working on his own material- that the more deeply one explores the phenomena of human individuation, the more unreservedly one grasps the individual as a self-contained and dynamic entity, the closer one draws to that in the individual which is really no longer individual.

Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.