The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception. – Walter Benjamin
The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion. – Walter Benjamin
To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright. – Walter Benjamin
Experience has taught me that the shallowest of communist platitudes contains more of a hierarchy of meaning than contemporary bourgeois profundity. – Walter Benjamin
Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them. – Ralph Waldo Emerson