Walter Benjamin Quotes

• All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

  Walter Benjamin

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man.

  Walter Benjamin

  Topics in Art

• All efforts to make politics aesthetic culminate in one thing, war.

  Walter Benjamin

  Topics in Art
• 

  We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.

  Walter Benjamin

  Topics in Belief

  Tags in Books, Collectors

• Truth resists being projected into the realm of knowledge.

  Walter Benjamin

  Topics in Truth

• The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.

  Walter Benjamin

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Hope
• 

  How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!

  Walter Benjamin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Revealed, Pursuit, Books

• Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories.

  Walter Benjamin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Philosophy

• Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

  Walter Benjamin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing, Books

• Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.

  Walter Benjamin

  Topics in Death
• 

  The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.

  Walter Benjamin

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Convictions, Construction

• Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.

  Walter Perry Johnson

  Topics in Gift

• Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.

  Walter Benjamin

• To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

  Walter Benjamin

• The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.

  Walter Benjamin

• The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.

  Walter Benjamin

• 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.

  Walter Benjamin

• The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.

  Walter Benjamin

• The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.

  Walter Benjamin

• The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

  Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin (35)

Birth:	15th July, 1892
Death:	26th September, 1940
Nationality:	German
Profession:	Broadcaster, Critic, Essayist, Philosopher, Translator

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Today's Anniversary - 17th November

Births

• 1868 - Paul Hirsch
• 1937 - Peter Edward Cook
• 1966 - Sophie Marceau
• 1978 - Rachel McAdams
• 1906 - Soichiro Honda

Deaths

• 1983 - Raymond Aron
• 1858 - Robert Owen
• 1968 - Mervyn Peake
• 1995 - Marguerite Young
• 2003 - Don Gibson