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The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.

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
Construction
Conviction
Present
Facts
Power
Life
Convictions

More quotes by Walter Benjamin

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The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.
Walter Benjamin
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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.
Walter Benjamin
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Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well.
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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
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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.
Walter Benjamin
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Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.
Walter Benjamin
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The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man.
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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Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up.
Walter Benjamin
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It is only for those without hope that hope is given.
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I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order.
Walter Benjamin
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To do justice to the figure of Kafka in its purity and its peculiar beauty one must never lose sight of one thing: it is the purity and beauty of a failure.
Walter Benjamin
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Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.
Walter Benjamin
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We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.
Walter Benjamin
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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.
Walter Benjamin
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If mythic violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates if the former threatens, the latter strikes if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood
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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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In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in flashes. The text is the thunder rolling long afterward.
Walter Benjamin
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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.
Walter Benjamin
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Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
Walter Benjamin