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Because he never raises his eyes to the great and the meaningful, the philistine has taken experience as his gospel. It has become for him a message about life's commonness. But he has never grasped that there exists something other than experience, that there are values—inexperienceable—which we serve.

— Walter Benjamin Experience (1913)

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Experience

More quotes by Walter Benjamin

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940)

Scholarship, far from leading inexorably to a profession, may in fact preclude it. For it does not permit you to abandon it.

The Life of Students (1915)

Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.

I would like to metamorphose into a mouse-mountain.

To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.

Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940)

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Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Oh who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried.

Lord Byron The Corsair (1814)

A gram of experience is worth a ton of theory.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

Rita Mae Brown Alma Mater (2001)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Walter Benjamin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.