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

The very people who burst with proofs of exuberant vitality could easily be taken for prepared corpses, from whom the news of their not-quite-successful decease has been withheld for reasons of population policy. Underlying the prevalent health is death. All the movements of health resemble the reflex-movements of beings whose hearts have stopped beating.

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

The task of art today is to bring chaos into order.

The usual reproach against the essay, that it is fragmentary and random, itself assumes the givenness of totality and suggests that man is in control of this totality. The desire of the essay, though, is not to filter the eternal out of the transitory; it wants, rather, to make the transitory eternal.

The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available.

In psycho-analysis nothing is true except the exaggerations.