“What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.”

“In so far as the culture industry arouses a feeling of well-being that the world is precisely in that order suggested by the culture industry, the substitute gratification which it prepares for hum...”

“The darkening of the world makes the irrationality of art rational: radically darkened art.”

“Art is the social antithesis of society, not directly deducible from it.”

“Philosophy, which once seemed outmoded, remains alive because the moment of its realization was missed. The summary judgement that it had merely interpreted the world is itself crippled by resignat...”

“They [the critics] deal with Schoenbergs early works and all their wealth by classifying them, with the music-historical clich, as late romantic post-Wagnerian. One might just as well dispose of Be...”

“Every evil starts with 15 volts.”

“My feeling about work is that it's an unnecessary evil, so I've always done my best to avoid it.”

“Neither love nor evil conquers all, but evil cheats more.”

“It is so hard to leaveuntil you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.”

“I remembered that once, as a child, I was filled with wonder, that I had marveled at tri-folded science projects, encyclopedias, and road atlases. I left much of that wonder somewhere between Mrs.W...”

“Most of us probably fall several times a day into a fit somewhat like this: The eyes are fixed on vacancy, the sounds of the world melt into a confused unity, the attention is dispersed so that the...”

“While we are actually subjected to them, the 'moods' and 'spirits' of nature point no morals. Overwhelming gaiety, insupportable grandeur, sombre desolation are flung at you. Make what you can of t...”

“...[N]ature generally in the distribution of her capacities has adapted the means to the end... [so nature's] true destination must be to produce a will, not merely good as a means to something els...”

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.”