The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.

The darkening of the world makes the irrationality of art rational: radically darkened art.

Modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological, category.

Kitsch parodies catharsis...It is in vain to try to draw the boundaries abstractly between aesthetic fiction and kitsch's emotional plunder. It is a poison admixed to all art; excising it is today one of art's despairing efforts.

The objective tendency of the Enlightenment, to wipe out the power of images over man, is not matched by any subjective progress on the part of enlightened thinking towards freedom from images.

It is barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz.

The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.