German Jewish philosopher (1892-1940)
Mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the "authentic" print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice -- politics.
WALTER BENJAMIN
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
In the world's structure dream loosens individuality like a bad tooth.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Reflections
The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Theses on the Philosophy of History
Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Unpacking my Library: A Talk About Book Collecting
To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
WALTER BENJAMIN
One-Way Street
God's linguistic being is the word. All human language is only reflection of the word in name. Name is no closer to the word than knowledge to creation. The infinity of all human language always remains limited and analytical in nature in comparison to the absolutely unlimited and creative infinity of the divine word.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Reflections
The historical materialist leaves it to others to be drained by the whore called "Once upon a time" in historicism's bordello.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Theses on the Philosophy of History
Scholarship, far from leading inexorably to a profession, may in fact preclude it. For it does not permit you to abandon it.
WALTER BENJAMIN
The Life of Students
The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Theses on the Philosophy of History
The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.
WALTER BENJAMIN
One-Way Street
The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
WALTER BENJAMIN
The Storyteller
History breaks down in images not into stories.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Arcades Project
You follow the same paths of thought as before. Only, they appear strewn with roses.
WALTER BENJAMIN
"Main features of my first impression of hashish", December 18, 1927
All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Illuminations
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
Reflections
Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Reflections
All purposeful manifestations of life, including their very purposiveness, in the final analysis have their end not in life but in the expression of its nature, in the representation of its significance.
WALTER BENJAMIN
The Task of the Translator
The work is the death mask of its conception.
WALTER BENJAMIN
One-Way Street
Knowledge exists only in lightning flashes. The text is the thunder rolling long afterwards.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Arcades Project
Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
WALTER BENJAMIN
The Frankfurter Zeitung, No. 76