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 power of works of art still continues to be secretly nourished by imitation... kitsch

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

An emancipated society, on the other hand, would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences.

The good man is he who rules himself as he does his own property: his autonomous being is modelled on material power.

A pencil and rubber are of more use to thought than a battalion of assistants. To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it.

All satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay. Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire.