Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people.

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.

The task of art today is to bring chaos into order. Artistic productivity is the capacity for being voluntarily involuntary.

The film has succeeded in transforming subjects so indistinguishably into social functions, that those wholly encompassed, no longer aware of any conflict, enjoy their own dehumanization as something human, as the joy of warmth. The total interconnectedness of the culture industry, omitting nothing, is one with total social delusion.

Happiness is obsolete: uneconomic.

What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.

The culture industry not so much adapts to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them.