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
The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Illuminations
Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.
WALTER BENJAMIN
The Frankfurter Zeitung, No. 76
There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.
WALTER BENJAMIN
"The Task of the Translator"
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
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
Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Selected Writings
Life is in fact mortal, and the immortal things are flesh, energy, individuality, and spirit in its various guises.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Gesammelte Schriften
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
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
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
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
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
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
Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Theses on the Philosophy of History