It is true that for us art is not an end in itself, we have lost too many of our illusions for that. Art is for us an occasion for social criticism, and for real understanding of the age we live in... Dada was not a school of artists, but an alarm signal against declining values, routine and speculations, a desperate appeal, on behalf of all forms of art, for a creative basis on which to build a new and universal consciousness of art.

Richard Kostelanetz and Joseph Darby (eds.) Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music (New York: Schirmer, 1996) ISBN 0028645812