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

“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.”

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

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

“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 resignation before reality, and becomes a defeatism of reason after the transformation of the world failed. It guarantees no place from which theory as such could be concretely convicted of the anachronism, which then as now it is suspected of. Perhaps the interpretation which promised the transition did not suffice. The moment on which the critique of theory depended is not to be prolonged theoretically. Praxis, delayed for the foreseeable future, is no longer the court of appeals against self-satisfied speculation, but for the most part the pretext under which executives strangulate that critical thought as idle which a transforming praxis most needs. After philosophy broke with the promise that it would be one with reality or at least struck just before the hour of its production, it has been compelled to ruthlessly criticize itself.”

“The forms of art reflect the history of man more truthfully than do documents themselves.”

“Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.”