Walter Benjamin Quotes

• 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

• 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

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

  Walter Benjamin

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Hope

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

  Walter Benjamin

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Convictions, Construction

• 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

• The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.

  Walter Benjamin

• The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.

  Walter Benjamin

• Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.

  Walter Benjamin

• Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.

  Walter Benjamin

• Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.

  Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin (35)

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

Related Authors

• Paul Crouch
• Michelene Wandor
• Arthur Godfrey
• Michael Portillo
• Pat Buchanan
• Robert A. Cook
• Alexis Korner
• Michael Parkinson
• Charles Templeton
• Anthony Holden

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 24th November

Births

• 1957 - Denise Crosby
• 1925 - Simon Van Der Meer
• 1934 - Martin Charnin
• 1960 - Paul Tagliabue
• 1935 - Ron Dellums

Deaths

• 1957 - Diego Rivera
• 1990 - Fred Shero
• 1963 - Lee Harvey Oswald
• 1807 - Joseph Brant
• 1991 - Paul Charles Caravello