[To Freud], [t]he ascetic was limited, and often broken, in his organizational usefulness by a naïve dedication to principle. - Philip Rieff

Reason cannot save us, nothing can; but reason can mitigate the cruelty of living.

Surely the romantic and now permanent revolution against the ancient regime of reason is against a regime largely invented by the revolutionaries themselves.

[The United States and the post-Stalinist Soviet Union,] [b]oth issue from the assumption that wealth is a superior and adequate substitute for symbolic impoverishment. Both American and Soviet cultures are essentially variants of the same belief in wealth as the functional equivalent of a high civilization. In both cultures, the controlling symbolism has been stripped down to a belief in the efficacy of wealth. Quantity has become quality. The answer to all questions of “what for?” is “more.” ... Out of this redefinition, Western culture is changing already into a symbol system unprecedented in its plasticity and absorptive capacity. Nothing much can oppose it really, and it welcomes all criticism, for, in a sense, it stands for nothing.