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It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed.
Walter Benjamin
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Walter Benjamin
Age: 48 †
Born: 1892
Born: July 15
Died: 1940
Died: September 26
Art Critic
Essayist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Philosopher
Sociologist
Translator
Writer
Berlin
Germany
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin
Make
Press
Judging
Insinuate
Attitude
Uninformed
Media
Generated
Opinion
Irresponsible
Public
Incapable
Purpose
Precisely
Someone
Presses
More quotes by Walter Benjamin
We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.
Walter Benjamin
Bourgeois existence is the regime of private affairs . . . and the family is the rotten, dismal edifice in whose closets and crannies the most ignominious instincts are deposited. Mundane life proclaims the total subjugation of eroticism to privacy.
Walter Benjamin
During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well
Walter Benjamin
Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.
Walter Benjamin
He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.
Walter Benjamin
Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.
Walter Benjamin
He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say.
Walter Benjamin
In other words, the unique value of the authentic work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty.
Walter Benjamin
He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging... This confers the tone and bearing of genuine reminiscences. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil.
Walter Benjamin
The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe
Walter Benjamin
Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.
Walter Benjamin
Not to find one’s way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one’s way in a city, as one loses one’s way in a forest, requires some schooling.
Walter Benjamin
Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.
Walter Benjamin
All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate.
Walter Benjamin
Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.
Walter Benjamin
The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.
Walter Benjamin
The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.
Walter Benjamin
To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
Walter Benjamin
Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably.
Walter Benjamin
In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.
Walter Benjamin
