“There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.” — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
The present, which, as a model of Messianic time, comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgment, coincides with the… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“Historical materialism has every reason to distinguish itself sharply from bourgeois habits of thought. Its founding concept is not progress but actualization.” — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it "the way it really was"...It means to seize hold of a… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule. We must arrive at… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“What matters for the dialectician is having the wind of world history in his sails. Thinking for him means: to set the… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
Marx says that revolutions are the locomotives of world history. But the situation may be quite different. Perhaps revolutions are not the… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule. We must arrive at… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceived a chain of… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“...nothing that is historical can relate itself, from its own ground, to anything messianic. Therefore, the Kingdom of God is not the… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“For the materialist historian, every epoch with which he occupies himself is only a fore-history of that which really concerns him. And… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
The face of the angel of history is turned toward the past. Where we perceived a chain of events, he sees a… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than of convictions, and of such facts as have scarcely… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
“It should be pointed out that certain correlative concepts retain their meaning, and possibly their foremost significance, if they are referred exclusively to man.… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
“to great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives.” — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
Melancholy betrays the world for the sake of knowledge. But in its tenacious self-absorption it embraces dead objects in its contemplation, in order to… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
For what is the program of the bourgeois parties? A bad poem on springtime, filled to bursting with metaphors. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
There was the pedestrian who wedged himself into the crowd, but there was also the flneur who demanded elbow room and was unwilling to… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
![“...nothing that is historical can relate itself, from its own ground, to anything messianic. Therefore, the Kingdom of God is not the telos of the historical dynamic; it cannot be established as a goal. From the standpoint of history, it is not the goal but the terminus [ Ende ]. Therefore, the…” quote by Walter Benjamin](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/229/walter-benjamin-1723_goals_nothing-that-is-historical-can-relate-it_3115407.jpg)
