"Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments."
― Walter Benjamin
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"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism."
― Walter Benjamin |
"Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed."
― Walter Benjamin |
"He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging."
― Walter Benjamin |
"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."
― Walter Benjamin |
"Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably."
― Walter Benjamin
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"Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away."
― Walter Benjamin
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"In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in flashes. The text is the thunder rolling long afterward."
― Walter Benjamin
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"Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness."
― Walter Benjamin
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"All the decisive blows are struck left-handed."
― Walter Benjamin
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"The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed."
― Walter Benjamin
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"He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say."
― Walter Benjamin
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"In the world's structure dream loosens individuality like a bad tooth."
― Walter Benjamin
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"Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock."
― Walter Benjamin
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"All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation."
― Walter Benjamin |
"Every monument of civilization is a monument of barbarism."
― Walter Benjamin |
"All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one."
― Walter Benjamin
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"The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions."
― Walter Benjamin |
"Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill."
― Walter Benjamin
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"These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed."
― Walter Benjamin |
"The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man."
― Walter Benjamin
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"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
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"Not to find one’s way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one’s way in a city, as one loses one’s way in a forest, requires some schooling."
― Walter Benjamin
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"Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life."
― Walter Benjamin
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"Experience has taught me that the shallowest of communist platitudes contains more of a hierarchy of meaning than contemporary bourgeois profundity."
― Walter Benjamin
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"For only that which we knew and practiced at age 15 will one day constitute our attraction. And one thing, therefore, can never be made good: having neglected to run away from home."
― Walter Benjamin
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"Those who do not learn how to decipher photographs will be the illiterate of the future."
― Walter Benjamin |
"You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits."
― Walter Benjamin |
"All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war."
― Walter Benjamin |
"The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble."
― Walter Benjamin
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"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 |
"Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things."
― Walter Benjamin
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"In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in flashes. The text is the thunder rolling long afterward."
― Walter Benjamin
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"You follow the same paths of thought as before. Only, they appear strewn with roses."
― Walter Benjamin
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"He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest."
― Walter Benjamin
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"Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text."
― Walter Benjamin
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"Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom."
― Walter Benjamin
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"Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation."
― Walter Benjamin
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"A bearer of news of death appears to himself as very important. His feeling - even against all reason - makes him a messenger from the realm of the dead."
― Walter Benjamin
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