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

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

None of the abstract concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than that of eternal peace.

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.

Thought as such… is an act of negation, of resistance to that which is forced upon it; this is what thought has inherited from its archetype, the relation between labor and material. Today, when ideologues tend more than ever to encourage thought to be positive, they cleverly note that positivity runs precisely counter to thought, and that it takes friendly persuasion by social authority to accustom thought to positivity.

Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

In many people it is already an impertinence to say 'I'.