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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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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
Future
Read
Cannot
Take
Men
Illiterate
Alphabet
Photograph

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To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it the way it really was...It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.
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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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Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.
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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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You follow the same paths of thought as before. Only, they appear strewn with roses.
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The distracted person, too, can form habits.
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We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.
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Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
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Mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.
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The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
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