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.

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

Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength.

Laughing in the cultural industry is mockery of happiness.

The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings.

The need to let suffering speak is a condition of all truth. For suffering is objectivity that weighs upon the subject

Advice to intellectuals: let no-one represent you.