Walter Benjamin Quotes

Walter Benjamin — German Critic born on July 15, 1892, died on September 27, 1940

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher and cultural critic. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School, and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was also related by law to German political theorist Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to his cousin, Günther Anders... (wikipedia)

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

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

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.

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

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