375 Quotes by Walter Benjamin

"I can't do nothin except try to find cloud nine."

"What we must demand from the photographer is the ability to put such a caption beneath his picture as will rescue it from the ravages of modishness and confer upon it a revolutionary use value."

"[Photography] has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or electric cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, How beautiful!"

"Rather than ask, What is the attitude of a work to the relations of production of its time? I should like to ask, What is its position in them."

"The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are ‘status quo’ is the catastrophe."

"I came into the world under the sign of Saturn – the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays."

"You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps – his tastes, his interest, his habits."

"The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of emergency” in which we live is not the exception but the rule."

"That things are “status quo” is the catastrophe."

"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 perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well."