Walter Benjamin citáty

„Dějiny píšou vítězové.“

„Umění vyprávět příběhy se blíží svému konci, protože epická stránka pravdy, moudrost, vymírá.“

„Této bouři říkáme pokrok.“

„Práce na dobrém díle probíhá na třech úrovních: hudební, kde se komponuje, architektonické, kde se konstruuje, a nakonec textilní, kde se tká.“

„Jediný způsob, jak poznat člověka, je beznadějně ho milovat.“

„Sex je vládce, u něhož je láska ve služebním poměru.“

„Žárlivost je láska těch, kteří milují jenom sebe.“

„Kdo žije z naděje, zemře hlady.“

„Pokud si chceš prodloužit život, zkrať své schody.“

„Nemáme se světu smát, ani ho oplakávat, nýbrž jej pochopit.“

„Laskavost nespočívá v tom, že levou rukou poskytujeme maličkosti, nýbrž v tom, že největší věci dáváme tak, jako by byli maličkosti.“

„Když se na zlo ukáže, neznamená to ještě, že se proti němu něco dělá.“

„Dějiny světa jsou kronikou zkázy.“

„Nepodceňujte duchaplnost, která podrývá a klade nároky. Je to dychtivost odkrývat propasti a pak je přeskakovat.“

„Polovina pravdy bývá často velkou lží.“

„Dokonalý milenecký vztah je ten, v němž žádný z obou milenců nepokládá soulož za svou vinu.“

„Jestliže chceš klidně spát, vem si s sebou do postele čisté svědomí.“

„Naděje je nám dána jen kvůli beznadějným.“

„Poprvé ve světových dějinách technická reprodukovatelnost emancipuje umělecké dílo od jeho parazitické závislosti na rituálu… Místo, aby bylo založené na rituálu, začíná být založené na jiné praxi – politice.“

„Konstrukce života leží v daném okamžiku mnohem více v moci fakt než v moci přesvědčení.“

„Prací paměti je hroutit čas.“

“This storm is what we call progress.”

“Nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history.”

“History is written by the victors.”

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

“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

“How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!”

“To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.”

“Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.”

“I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.”

“If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.”

“There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one.”

“That claim cannot be settled cheaply.”

“Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.”

“In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist.”

“Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.”

“It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.”

“You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.”

“The work of memory collapses time.”

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

“All efforts to make politics aesthetic culminate in one thing, war.”

“Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].”

“In the end, we get older, we kill everyone who loves us through the worries we give them, through the troubled tenderness we inspire in them, and the fears we ceaselessly cause.”

“It is only for those without hope that hope is given.”

“Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.”

“No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.”

“There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.”

“Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.”

“Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.”

“The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. His need for fresh air and open space is stronger than any hatred.”