Walter Benjamin

"Social democracy will never possess the necessary resolution to fight capitalism."

"Art exists in the tension between creation and destruction."

"A writer must turn experiences into books."

"The city is, above all, the world in which the commodity has made itself at home."

"Speed is the substance of this new world of ours."

"Life is lived in the margins."

"Every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably."

"To understand the world, one must know its darkness."

"The task of the storyteller is to pass on the news of the world."

"Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt."

"Language is the medium in which ideas become flesh."

"The critic is not a judge but a midwife of meaning."

"Interruption is the form of memory."

"One must speak in such a way that listeners feel they are hearing what they have already known."

"The moment has arrived when humanity must either free itself or perish."

"Great thoughts come to minds that do not labor for them."

"Fascism has taught everything one needs to know about the power of commodities."

"The factory is the site of the true drama of our age."

"To live in solitude is to listen to the voice of the past."

"Beauty exists in the breakdown of mechanical reproduction."

"The most important thing is to know how to live."

"History is constructed from fragments."

"What we call culture is always a palimpsest."

"The revolutionary task is to seize the historical moment."

"Boredom is the dream bird that hatches experience."

"The present is not a bridge between past and future but their battlefield."

"To read is to travel through the minds of others."

"Enlightenment is not the triumph of reason but the triumph of experience."

"What is lost in the dream is regained in memory."

"The past speaks to us through its ruins."