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Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably.
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
Disappear
Image
Present
Past
Every
Irretrievably
Recognised
Threatens
More quotes by Walter Benjamin
Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.
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The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.
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It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.
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Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.
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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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Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.
Walter Benjamin
I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.
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
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.
Walter Benjamin
A blind determination to save the prestige of personal existence, rather than, through an impartial disdain for its impotence and entanglement, at least to detach it from the background of universal delusion, is triumphing almost everywhere.
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There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.
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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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Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.
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Those who do not learn how to decipher photographs will be the illiterate of the future.
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As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth.
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Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.
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There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
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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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Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.
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The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
Walter Benjamin