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Walter Benjamin Quotes


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

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

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
The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.

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

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

Walter Benjamin
The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.

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

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