Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.

The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.

It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.

I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.

The power of a text when it is read is different from the power it has when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.

In the convulsions of the commodity economy, we begin to recognize the monuments of the bourgeoisie as ruins even before they have crumbled.

The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.