It’s no secret that philosopher Walter Benjamin was a deep thinker. His quotes often make you stop and reflect on your own life. If you’re looking for a little inspiration, or simply want to expand your thinking, then these quotes from Walter Benjamin are sure to do the trick! Here are some of our favorites.
Walter Benjamin Quotes
“You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps – his tastes, his interest, his habits.”
Walter Benjamin
“History is written by the victors.”
Walter Benjamin
“It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.”
Walter Benjamin
“The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.”
Walter Benjamin
“The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.”
Walter Benjamin
“Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well.”
Walter Benjamin
“No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.”
Walter Benjamin
“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
“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. Street names must speak to the urban wanderer like the snapping of dry twigs, and little streets in the heart of the city must reflect the times of day, for him, as clearly as a mountain valley. This art I acquired rather late in life; it fulfilled a dream, of which the first traces were labyrinths on the blotting papers in my school notebooks.”
Walter Benjamin
“We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.”
Walter Benjamin
“There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”
Walter Benjamin
“The illiterate of the future will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph.”
Walter Benjamin
“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
“The work of memory collapses time.”
Walter Benjamin
“All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.”
Walter Benjamin
“Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.”
Walter Benjamin
“It is only for those without hope that hope is given.”
Walter Benjamin
“Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption.”
Walter Benjamin
“Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.”
Walter Benjamin
“To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.”
Walter Benjamin
“The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.”
Walter Benjamin
“All efforts to make politics aesthetic culminate in one thing, war.”
Walter Benjamin
“Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories.”
Walter Benjamin
“How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!”
Walter Benjamin
“In the end, we get older, we kill everyone who loves us through the worries we give them, through the troubled tenderness we inspire in them, and the fears we ceaselessly cause.”
Walter Benjamin
“The street becomes a dwelling for the flâneur; he is as much at home among the facades of houses as a citizen is in his four walls. To him the shiny, enameled signs of businesses are at least as good a wall ornament as an oil painting is to the bourgeois in his salon. The walls are the desk against which he presses his notebooks; news-stands are his libraries and the terraces of cafés are the balconies from which he looks down on his household after his work is done.”
Walter Benjamin
“[The flâneur] would be happy to trade all his knowledge of artists’ quarters, birthplaces and princely palaces for the scent of a single weathered threshold or the touch of a single tile – that which any old dog carries away.”
Walter Benjamin
A Final Word
While it’s impossible to boil down the complex and multi-layered ideas in Walter Benjamin’s writing into a single blog post, we’ve hopefully given you a little taste of what makes him one of the most interesting thinkers of the 20th century. If you’re interested in reading more, be sure to check out our recommended books section for some great recommendations.
Do you have a favorite from this list of Walter Benjamin quotes? Is there another you’d add to the list? Let me know in the comments.
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