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

— Walter Benjamin Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940)

Es ist niemals ein Dokument der Kultur, ohne zugleich ein solches der Barbarei zu sein.

Original text (German)

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More quotes by Walter Benjamin

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)

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

Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940)

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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.