Walter Benjamin Quotes & Sayings

30 most famous Walter Benjamin quotes and sayings (critic). These are the first 10 quotes we have.

“Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred.”

“All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.”

“Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.”

“He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.”

“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.”

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

“The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.”

“The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.”

“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.”