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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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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
Fields
Concerned
Knowledge
Flashes
Comes
Afterward
Long
Thunder
Text
Flash
Rolling

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I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.
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As Hegel put it, only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. Only in extinction is the collector comprehend.
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As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth.
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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.
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The present, which, as a model of Messianic time, comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgment, coincides with the stature which the history of mankind has in the universe.
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The killing of a criminal can be moral-but never its legitimation.
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It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed.
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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.
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All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
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The crowd is the veil through which the familiar city beckons to the flâneur as phantasmagoria-now a landscape, now a room.
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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
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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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Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.
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If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.
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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.
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Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things.
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The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man.
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Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.
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There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.
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Literature tells very little to those who understand it.
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