Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices.

Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people.

The power of works of art still continues to be secretly nourished by imitation... kitsch

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

Jazz is the false liquidation of art - instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.

Kitsch evokes a future utopia looking back at a past that is selectively (mis)remembered, thereby helping to stabilize the present toward which kitsch is otherwise deeply anatagonistic.

To hate destructiveness, one must hate life as well: only death is an image of undistorted life ... organic life is an illness peculiar to our unlovely planet.