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There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

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
Civilization
Time
Barbarism
Document
Documents

More quotes by Walter Benjamin

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The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the state of emergency in which we live is not the exception but the rule.
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You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.
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If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.
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Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.
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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.
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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.
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These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
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A blind determination to save the prestige of personal existence, rather than, through an impartial disdain for its impotence and entanglement, at least to detach it from the background of universal delusion, is triumphing almost everywhere.
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As Hegel put it, only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. Only in extinction is the collector comprehend.
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We do not always proclaim loudly the most important thing we have to say. Nor do we always privately share it with those closest to us, our intimate friends, those who have been most devotedly ready to receive our confession.
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In the end, we get older, we kill everyone who loves us through the worries we give them, through the troubled tenderness we inspire in them, and the fears we ceaselessly cause.
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Marx says that revolutions are the locomotives of world history. But the situation may be quite different. Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake.
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All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.
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The work of memory collapses time.
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The killing of a criminal can be moral-but never its legitimation.
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The book borrower...proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures...as by his failure to read these books.
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To perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return.
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Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well.
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The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man.
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To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.
Walter Benjamin