Quotes by Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin

German philosopher

Category: Philosophers

Lived from: 1882-1940

• All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate.

  Walter Benjamin

  German philosopher 1882-1940

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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

  German philosopher 1882-1940

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• Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.

  Walter Benjamin

  German philosopher 1882-1940

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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

  German philosopher 1882-1940

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• Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.

  Walter Benjamin

  German philosopher 1882-1940

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• Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.

  Walter Benjamin

  German philosopher 1882-1940

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• Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.

  Walter Benjamin

  German philosopher 1882-1940

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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

  German philosopher 1882-1940

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• Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

  Walter Benjamin

  German philosopher 1882-1940

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• Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.

  Walter Benjamin

  German philosopher 1882-1940

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