Walter Benjamin Quotes

Quotes about:

• We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.

  Walter Benjamin

  Book, Facts, Belief

  26 Copy quote

• All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

  Walter Benjamin

  Intelligence, Form, Interpretation

  41 Copy quote

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

  Walter Benjamin

  Love, Friendship, Relationship

  64 Copy quote

• There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

  Walter Benjamin

  Civilization, Barbarism, Documents

  "Theses on the Philosophy of History" by Walter Benjamin, translated by Harry Zohn, Illuminations, (VII), 1973.

  55 Copy quote

• The work of memory collapses time.

  Walter Benjamin

  Memories, Collapse

  8 Copy quote

• History breaks down into images, not into stories.

  Walter Benjamin

  Stories, Breaking Down, Break

  12 Copy quote

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

  Walter Benjamin

  Thinking, Flow, Wells

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.272, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

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

  Walter Benjamin

  Happiness, Being Happy, Fear

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland (1996). “Selected Writings: 1913-1926”, p.463, Harvard University Press

  70 Copy quote

• Every monument of civilization is a monument of barbarism

  Walter Benjamin

  Inspirational, Civilization, Barbarism

  30 Copy quote

• Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.

  Walter Benjamin

  Art, Unique, Space

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.230, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  35 Copy quote

• Those who do not learn how to decipher photographs will be the illiterate of the future.

  Walter Benjamin

  Learning, Photograph, Illiterate

  15 Copy quote

• No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.

  Walter Benjamin

  Symphony, Beholder, Reader

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.58, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

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

  Walter Benjamin

  Judging, Public Opinion, Matter

  Walter Benjamin (1996). “Selected Writings: 1927-1934”, p.433, Harvard University Press

  8 Copy quote

• The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe

  Walter Benjamin

  Ideas, Progress, Status Quo

  Walter Benjamin, Michael William Jennings (2003). “Selected Writings: 1938-1940”, p.184, Harvard University Press

  49 Copy quote

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

  Walter Benjamin

  Photography, Cameras, Doe

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.247, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  38 Copy quote

• Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed, an architectural one, where it is constructed, and finally a textile one, where it is woven.

  Walter Benjamin

  Writing, Musical, Woven

  "One-Way Street and Other Writings".

  25 Copy quote

• Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.

  Walter Benjamin

  Intimate Relationships, Alive, Ownership

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.77, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  11 Copy quote

• Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange our experiences...Experience has fallen in value. And it looks as if it is continuing to fall into bottomlessness.

  Walter Benjamin

  Fall, Taken, People

  "Illuminations". Book by Walter Benjamin, 1950.

  9 Copy quote

• Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things.

  Walter Benjamin

  Art, Kitsch, Teach

  Walter Benjamin, Michael William Jennings, Brigid Doherty (2008). “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media”, p.209, Harvard University Press

  16 Copy quote

• The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.

  Walter Benjamin

  Writing, Ideas, Delay

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland (1996). “Selected Writings: 1913-1926”, p.526, Harvard University Press

  72 Copy quote

• You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.

  Walter Benjamin

  Book, Men, Taste

  35 Copy quote

• Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably.

  Walter Benjamin

  Past, Disappear

  9 Copy quote

• The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the "state of emergency" in which we live is not the exception but the rule.

  Walter Benjamin

  Emergencies, Tradition, States

  Walter Benjamin, Michael William Jennings (2003). “Selected Writings: 1938-1940”, p.392, Harvard University Press

  25 Copy quote

• The fairy tale, which to this day is the first tutor of children because it was once the first tutor of mankind, secretly lives on in the story. The first true storyteller is, and will continue to be, the teller of fairy tales. Whenever good counsel was at a premium, the fairy tale had it, and where the need was greatest, its aid was nearest. This need was created by myth. The fairy tale tells us of the earliest arrangements that mankind made to shake off the nightmare which myth had placed upon its chest.

  Walter Benjamin

  Children, Needs, Stories

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.112, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  24 Copy quote

• All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.

  Walter Benjamin

  Literature, Great Work, Genre

  11 Copy quote

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