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"Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know."
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"We are born more dead than when we die after we have searched death through the storm of the instants of our entire life."

"That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?''Yes' Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.'Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

"I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating."

"Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece."

"Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence."

"Ain't you thinkin' what's it gonna be like when we get there? Ain't you scared it won't be nice like we thought?No, she said quickly. No, I ain't. You can't do that. I can't do that. It's too much - livin' too many lives. Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes, it'll on'y be one."
Explore more quotes by 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."


"Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven."


"The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion."


"The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out."


"The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception."


"The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion."


"The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again."


"He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest."


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