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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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Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.

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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.

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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.

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Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.

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All disgust is originally disgust at touching.

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Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

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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... →

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The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.

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Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.

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Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.

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

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It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.

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

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