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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.

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
History
Ride
May
Train
Locomotives
Human
Revolution
Brake
Humans
Perhaps
Grabbing
Different
Says
Marx
World
Quite
Emergency
Situation
Revolutions
Race
Emergencies

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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.
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The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.
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Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].
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