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30 quotes by Walter Benjamin

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (German: [ˈvaltɐ ˈbɛnjamiːn]; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German philosopher and cultural critic. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, historical materialism, and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism. He is associated with the Frankfurt School. He was also related by marriage to German...
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The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.

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

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All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

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

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

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

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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... →

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Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead... →

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He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.

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It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude... →

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

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

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The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The... →

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