Bourgeois existence is the regime of private affairs . . . and the family is the rotten, dismal edifice in whose closets and crannies the most ignominious instincts are deposited. Mundane life proclaims the total subjugation of eroticism to privacy.

Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].

The illiterate of the future will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph.

To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.

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

Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.

The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.