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

— Walter Benjamin

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

— Walter Benjamin

Historical materialism has every reason to distinguish itself sharply from bourgeois habits of thought. Its founding concept is not progress but actualization.

— Walter Benjamin

History is written by the victors.

— Walter Benjamin

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

— Walter Benjamin

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.

— Walter Benjamin

Languages are not strangers to on another.

— Walter Benjamin

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

— Walter Benjamin

Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater. It is the medium of experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.

— Walter Benjamin

No more semblance or dissemblance, no more God or Man, only an immanent logic of the principle of operability.

— Walter Benjamin