To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe

All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

If mythic violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-​destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood

Those who do not learn how to decipher photographs will be the illiterate of the future.

We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.