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

It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies.

Dissonance is the truth about harmony.

Art as a whole is a riddle. Another way of putting this is to say that art expresses something while at the same time hiding it.

Dialectic thought is an attempt to break through the coercion of logic by its own means.

They [the critics] deal with Schoenberg's early works and all their wealth by classifying them, with the music-historical cliché, as late romantic post-Wagnerian. One might just as well dispose of Beethoven as a late-classicist post-Haydnerian.

To say 'we' and mean 'I' is one of the most recondite insults.