Quotes by Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin

German philosopher

Lived from: 1892 - 1940

Category: Philosophers Country: FlagGermany

Born: 15 july 1892 Died: 26 september 1940

  • Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.
  • Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.
  • The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.
  • 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.
+1

Quotes 1 till 20 of 35.

1 2 Next 
  • The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
    +18
  • Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
    +2
  • The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
    +1
  • Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information - hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • Experience has taught me that the shallowest of communist platitudes contains more of a hierarchy of meaning than contemporary bourgeois profundity.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • 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 of someone irresponsible, uninformed.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • 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 cities lie interred.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • 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 because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.
    ― Walter Benjamin
    - +
     0
  • 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
    - +
     0
1 2 Next 
All Walter Benjamin famous quotes and sayings you will always find on greatest-quotations.com

Popular subjects

Popular authors

Questions and Answers

What are the most famous quotes from Walter Benjamin?

The two most famous quotes from Walter Benjamin are:

  • "The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope."
  • "Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom."

When did Walter Benjamin live?

Walter Benjamin was born in 1892 and died in the year 1940.