Walter Benjamin quotes - page 3

Walter Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, and essayist known for his influential writings on literature and aesthetics. His works bridged Marxist theory, Jewish mysticism, and literary criticism, profoundly shaping 20th-century thought. He remains a pivotal figure in critical theory and modern philosophy. Here are 106 of his quotes:

The true sign of decadence is not the collusion of the university and the state (something that is by no means incompatible with honest barbarity), but the theory and guarantee of academic freedom, when in reality people assume with brutal simplicity that the aim of study is to steer its disciples to a socially conceived individuality.

Walter Benjamin

Capitalism is presumably the first case of a blaming, rather than a repenting cult. ... An enormous feeling of guilt not itself knowing how to repent, grasps at the cult, not in order to repent for this guilt, but to make it universal, to hammer it into consciousness and finally and above all to include God himself in this guilt.

Walter Benjamin

We know that the Jews were prohibited from investigating the future. The Torah and the prayers instruct them in remembrance, however. This stripped the future of its magic, to which all those succumb who turn to the soothsayers for enlightenment. This did not imply, however, that for the Jews the future turned into homogeneous empty time. For every second of time was the straight gate through which the Messiah might enter.

Walter Benjamin

Only a thoughtless observer can deny that correspondences come into play between the world of modern technology and the archaic symbol-world of mythology.

Walter Benjamin

One might, for example, speak of an unforgettable life or moment even if all men had forgotten it. If the nature of such a life or moment required that it be unforgotten, that predicate would imply not a falsehood but merely a claim unfulfilled by men, and probably also a reference to a realm in which it is fulfilled: God's remembrance.

Walter Benjamin

For the Romantics and for speculative philosophy, ... to be critical meant to elevate thinking so far beyond all restrictive conditions that the knowledge of truth sprang forth magically, as it were, from insight into the falsehood of these restrictions.

Walter Benjamin

Criticism and prophecy must be the two categories that meet in the salvation of the past.

Walter Benjamin

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.

Walter Benjamin

All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

Walter Benjamin

All disgust is originally disgust at touching.

Walter Benjamin

Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.

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

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

Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.

Walter Benjamin

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

Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.

Walter Benjamin

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

Walter Benjamin

Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.

Walter Benjamin

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

Walter Benjamin

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

Walter Benjamin

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

Walter Benjamin

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