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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
Power
Life
Convictions
Construction
Conviction
Present
Facts
More quotes by Walter Benjamin
All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.
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
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
Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.
Walter Benjamin
Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.
Walter Benjamin
Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.
Walter Benjamin
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
Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
Walter Benjamin
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
For every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter.
Walter Benjamin
The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.
Walter Benjamin
As Hegel put it, only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. Only in extinction is the collector comprehend.
Walter Benjamin
Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.
Walter Benjamin
Experience has taught me that the shallowest of communist platitudes contains more of a hierarchy of meaning than contemporary bourgeois profundity.
Walter Benjamin
Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.
Walter Benjamin
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
The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe
Walter Benjamin
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
Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have at the moment of commemoration.
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
