Walter Benjamin Quotations

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

The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.

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.

Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.

Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.

The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.

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.

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

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

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

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

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

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.

Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.

All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.

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.

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

Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.

The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.

Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.

The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.

Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.

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.

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.

It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.

Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.

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

Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.

We need to be weapons of mass construction, weapons of mass love. It's not enough just to change the system. We need to change ourselves.

It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.

No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.

A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man. If he's not about liberation, if he's not about struggle, if he ain't about building a strong Black family, if he ain't about building a strong Black nation, then he ain't about nothing.

Hip Hop can be a very powerful weapon to help expand young people's political and social consciousness. But just as with any weapon, if you don't know how to use it, if you don't know where to point it, or what you're using it for, you can end up shooting yourself in the foot or killing your sisters or brothers.

Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is....never let your enemies choose your enemies for you.

White people's fear of Black people with guns will never cease to amaze me. Probably it's because they think about what they would do were they in our place. Especially the police, who have done so much dirt to Black people - their guilty conscience tells them to be afraid. When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear.

I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heartless, robots who protect them and their property.

Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along.

We usually reach success by putting the simple truths that we know into practice.

That was one of the big problems in the [Black Panther] Party. Criticism and self-criticism were not encouraged, and the little that was given often wasn’t taken seriously. Constructive criticism and self-criticism are extremely important for any revolutionary organization. Without them, people tend to drown in their mistakes, not learn from them.

The usual way the people are taught to think in amerika is that each subject is in a little compartment and has no relation to any other subject. For the most part, we receive fragments of unrelated knowledge, and our education follows no logical format or pattern. It is exactly this kind of education that produces people who don’t have the ability to think for themselves and who are easily manipulated.

Love is contraband in Hell, cause love is an acid that eats away bars. But you, me, and tomorrow hold hands and make vows that struggle will multiply. The hacksaw has two blades. The shotgun has two barrels. We are pregnant with freedom. We are a conspiracy.

Before going back to college, i knew i didn't want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.

Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression.

Any Black person in amerika [sic], if they are being honest with themselves, have got to come to the conclusion that they don't know what it feels like to be free. We aren't free politically, economically, or socially. We have very little power over what happens in our lives. In fact, a Black person isn't free to walk down the street. Walk down the wrong street, in the wrong neighborhood at night, and you know what happens.

I hate war, and I hate having to struggle. I honestly do because I wish I had been born into a world where it was unnecessary. This context of struggle and being a warrior and being a struggler has been forced on me by oppression. Otherwise I would be a sculptor, or a gardener, carpenter - You know, I would be free to be so much more… I guess part of me or a part of who I am, a part of what I do is being a warrior - a reluctant warrior, a reluctant struggler. But I do it, because I’m committed to life.

We're living in a very tricky world, and unless we become analytical and expose the tricknology, people will become sucked into that. It is very easy, it is very, very easy.

i Believe In The Fire Of Love And The Sweat Of Truth

Peace is a rare gift. Peace of mind, peaceful sleeps, and peaceful spirits are all luxuries that few rebels can ever afford.

Where there is oppression, there will be resistance.

No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

I think that, like many sisters, I was raised to be a Superwoman. I am a serious woman, and I want to be taken seriously.

I advocate revolutionary changes...an end to capitalist exploitation, the abolition of racist policies, the eradication of sexism and the elimination of political repression. If that is a crime, then I am totally guilty

If you're deaf, dumb, and blind to what's happening in the world, you're under no obligation to do anything. But if you know what's happening and you don't do anything but sit on your ass, then you're nothing but a punk

Like all other Black revolutionaries, Amerika is trying to lynch me.

At this time I'd like to say a few words especially to my sisters: SISTERS. BLACK PEOPLE WILL NEVER BE FREE UNLESS BLACK WOMEN PARTICIPATE IN EVERY ASPECT OF OUR STRUGGLE, ON EVERY LEVEL OF OUR STRUGGLE.

My life wasn't beautiful and creative before I became politically active. My life was totally changed when I began to struggle.

Any community seriously concerned with its own freedom has to be concerned about other people's freedom as well. The victory of oppressed people anywhere in the world is a victory for Black people. Each time one of imperialism's tentacles is cut off we are closer to liberation.

Freedom! you askin me about freedom. I'll be honest with you. I know a whole more about what freedom isn't than about what it is, 'cause I've never been free. I can only share my vision with you of the future, about what freedom is.

I found that people had all kinds of levels of consciousness, all kinds of levels of education, but that Cubans in general were very educated politically. I could go sit in a bus and get into a conversation with someone and that person had a wealth of knowledge. And energy!

The first part of planning is to believe that you can put that plan into practise.

I think that in order to struggle you have to be creative. In my life, creativity has been something that has sustained me; it awoke my spiritual struggle.

Dreams and reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.

I think that spirituality is important for all people to develop. I don't mean there necessarily has to be a religious aspect to spirituality. Some people are spiritual in a religious way, other people are spiritual in their work and in their art and in their treatment of other people.

Part of being a revolutionary is creating a vision that is more humane. That is more fun, too. That is more loving. It's really working to create something beautiful.

It is the obligation of every person who claims to oppose oppression to resist the oppressor by every means at his or her disposal. Not to engage in physical resistance, armed resistance to oppression, is to serve the interests of the oppressor; no more, no less. There are no exceptions to the rule, no easy out...

My experience in the United States was living in a society that was very much at war with itself, that was very alienated. People felt not part of a community, but like isolated units that were afraid of interaction, of contact, that were lonely.

To become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.

When you go through all your life processing and abusing your hair so it will look like the hair of another race of people then you are making a statement and the statement is clear

People are tried and convicted in the newspapers and on television before they ever see a courtroom.

For me personally Cuba has been a healing state. When I first got here I had no sense that I had to heal or anything. When you're struggling for your life and you're in the midst of things, you don't feel all the blows.

The more you understand what you're dealing with, the stronger you get. People see fear as a bad thing. Fear is healthy when you're dealing with Amerika. But when fear controls you, when you're afraid to struggle fear is a bad thing. I'm more afraid of what will happen if I don't struggle, than what will happen if I do

I am a Black revolutionary woman, and because of this i have been charged with and accused of every alleged crime in which a woman was believed to have participated. The alleged crimes in which only men were supposedly involved, i have been accused of planning. They have plastered pictures alleged to be me in post offices, airports, hotels, police cars, subways, banks, television, and newspapers. They have offered . rewards for my capture and they have issued orders to shoot on sight and shoot to kill.

I've always been a student of different ways of looking at the world, different religions. That's been part of my survival mechanism, and also part of my curiosity as a person.

I've tried as much as possible to avoid the standard nine-to-five thing. I've tried to organize my life so that I can move around, change the rhythm and the tempo.

I really prefer to be kind of anonymous. Because when people know your whole history, they have a tendency to relate to you differently and maybe put you up on a pedestal. I want people to just be normal with me. I just want to live my life.

A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man.

And if I know anything at all, it's that a wall is just a wall and nothing more at all. It can be broken down.

What most impressed me about Cuba was the optimism.

I was sentenced to life plus 30 years by an all-White jury. What I saw in prison was wall-to-wall Black flesh in chains. Women caged in cells. But we're the terrorists. It just doesn't make sense.

How lovely it is to live with a sense of community. To live where you can drop in the street and a million people will come and help you.

In my case, spirituality has been important to me because at periods in my life there's been very little else that I've had going. I've actually needed to call on, to feel the forces of good in this universe to be able to survive.

Schools in amerika are interested in brainwashing people with amerikanism, giving them a little bit of education, and training them in skills needed to fill the positions the capitalist system requires. As long as we expect amerika's schools to educate us, we will remain ignorant.

When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear.

Hip Hop can be a very effective way to reach young people and teach them about current political and social issues.

All of my experience of studying religion, studying spirituality, studying natural healing, traditional medicine, has kind of enriched my vision of the world. Not only seeing reality as this moment, but as a culmination of all of the history behind us, and all of the fruit that hopefully we will be able to grow from the seeds that we are trying to plant, of goodness and peace and beauty and equality.

I stay connected in my head. I'm spiritually and psychologically connected to African-Americans. They are my people, and that will never change.

We have to have a vision of the world we want to make in 100 years. And maybe when we have that vision, when we convince enough people that that is a realistic vision, and that the opposite vision is basically that if we don't do something in this 100 years, a hundred years from now this world is gonna be so destroyed, so raped and ravished that we won't HAVE much of a world to save.

We’re taught at such an early age to be against the communists, yet most of us don’t have the faintest idea what communism is. Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is.

I think that the greatest betrayal that a revolutionary can participate in is to become like the people you are struggling against. To become like your persecutors. I think that is a betrayal and a sin.

I had grown up at a time when people were being lynched, being attacked with water hoses. Becoming active and learning a different way of viewing my life was a healthy reaction to what I was seeing every day.

I believe in life. And I have seen the death parade

I think that the movement against the World Bank, against the globalization process that is happening, is very positive. We need a globalization, a globalization of people who are committed to social justice, to economic justice. We need a globalization of people who are committed to saving this earth, to making sure that the water is drinkable, that the air is breathable.

My energy just couldn’t stop dancing. I was caught up in the music of struggle, and i wanted to dance.

I realized that I was connected to Africa. I wasn't just a Colored girl. I was part of a whole world that wanted a better life. I'm part of a majority and not a minority. My life has been a life of growth. If you're not growing, you're not going to understand real love. If you're not reaching out to help others then you're shrinking. My life has been active. I'm not a spectator

I don't have to live up to that Superwoman myth. I can cry and be human and lean on people who take care of me. That can be very liberating.

People are really beginning to see the mechanisms of imperialism. When colonialism existed people could see colonialism. When racial segregation existed in its apartheid form, people could see the "whites only" signs. But it's much more difficult to see the structures of neo-imperialism, neo-colonialism, neo-slavery.