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All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

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
Takes
Knowledge
Form
Human
Humans
Interpretation
Intelligence

More quotes by Walter Benjamin

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By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action.
Walter Benjamin
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The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
Walter Benjamin
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Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.
Walter Benjamin
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You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.
Walter Benjamin
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Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present.
Walter Benjamin
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Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things.
Walter Benjamin
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Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.
Walter Benjamin
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Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information-hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.
Walter Benjamin
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The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.
Walter Benjamin
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Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill. Hermits have observed, if for only this reason, a frugal diet. For it is only in company that eating is done justice food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received.
Walter Benjamin
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Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well.
Walter Benjamin
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Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.
Walter Benjamin
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Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present. For what one has lived is at best comparable to a beautiful statue which has had all its limbs knocked off in transit, and now yields nothing but the precious block out of which the image of one's future must be hewn.
Walter Benjamin
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The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.
Walter Benjamin
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The illiterate of the future will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph.
Walter Benjamin
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The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.
Walter Benjamin
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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
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Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.
Walter Benjamin
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Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written.
Walter Benjamin
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Melancholy betrays the world for the sake of knowledge. But in its tenacious self-absorption it embraces dead objects in its contemplation, in order to redeem them
Walter Benjamin