The usual reproach against the essay, that it is fragmentary and random, itself assumes the givenness of totality and suggests that man is in control of this totality. The desire of the essay, though, is not to filter the eternal out of the transitory; it wants, rather, to make the transitory eternal.

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.

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

Quality is decided by the depth at which the work incorporates the alternatives within itself, and so masters them.

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.

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.

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