WALTER BENJAMIN QUOTES IV

German Jewish philosopher (1892-1940)

The enslavement of language in prattle is joined by the enslavement of things in folly almost as its inevitable consequence.

WALTER BENJAMIN

"On Language as Such and on the Language of Man", Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings


We must not forget that the most enduring modifications in toys are never the work of adults, whether they be educators, manufacturers or writers, but are the result of children at play.

WALTER BENJAMIN

"Old Toys", Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings: Part 1 1927-1930

Tags: toys


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

WALTER BENJAMIN

The Frankfurter Zeitung, No. 76

Tags: opinion


There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.

WALTER BENJAMIN

"The Task of the Translator"


Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out, armed, and relieve the idle stroller of his convictions.

WALTER BENJAMIN

One-Way Street


For it is only in company that eating is done justice; food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Reflections


Life is in fact mortal, and the immortal things are flesh, energy, individuality, and spirit in its various guises.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Gesammelte Schriften


Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Selected Writings

Tags: capitalism


Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Reflections


Where the presence of truth should be possible, it can be possible solely under the condition of the recognition of myth--that is, the recognition of its crushing indifference to truth.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Goethe's Elective Affinities


To be critical meant to elevate thinking so far beyond all restrictive conditions that the knowledge of truth sprang forth magically, as it were, from insight into the falsehood of these restrictions.

WALTER BENJAMIN

The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism


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

Theses on the Philosophy of History


Man is the knower in the same language in which God is creator. God created him in his image, he created the knower in the image of the creator.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Reflections


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

Tags: death


The nature of this melancholy becomes clearer, once one asks the question, with whom does the historical writer of historicism actually empathize. The answer is irrefutably with the victor. Those who currently rule are however the heirs of all those who have ever been victorious. Empathy with the victors thus comes to benefit the current rulers every time.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Theses on the Philosophy of History


All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Reflections

Tags: begging


To perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Illuminations


Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Reflections

Tags: thought


Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Theses on the Philosophy of History