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.
Theodor AdornoThose who cannot help ought also not advise: in an order where every mousehole has been plugged, mere advice exactly equals condemnation.
Theodor AdornoThe positive element of kitsch lies in the fact that it sets free for a moment the glimmering realization that you have wasted your life.
Theodor AdornoIndeed, happiness is nothing other than being encompassed, an after-image of the original shelter within the mother. But for this reason no one who is happy can know that he is so. To see happiness, he would have to pass out of it: to be as if already born. He who says he is happy lies, and in invoking happiness, sins against it. He alone keeps faith who says: I was happy.
Theodor Adorno