Walter Benjamin Quotes

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

Intuition does not in itself amount to knowledge, yet cannot be disregarded by philosophers and psychologists.

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.

It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

When people don't understand what they're watching, a lot of what they perceive has to do with who they themselves are.

To know the world, one must construct it

The sum of a million facts is not the truth.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

Different people, in good faith, can look at the same fact and interpret it differently. But that's where an interesting conversation begins.

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

To express the same idea in still another way, I think that human knowledge is essentially active.

From the perspective of mere representation, the external world always remains only a phenomenon.

Knowledge, may it be said, is higher than magic and is more to be sought. It is quite possible to see what is happening and yet not know what is forward, for while seeing is believing, it does not follow that either seeing or believing is knowing.

Our understanding is correlative to our perception.

Everything I worry about would be better if more people could read, write and comprehend.

Without philosophy, history is always for me dead and dumb.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

The perception of what a thing is and the perception of what it means are not separate, either.