Walter Benjamin Quotes

Architecture has paid high tribute to the leaders of mankind.

I think this is going to be a black day in the history of mankind.

The only important thing to realise about history is that it all took place in the last five minutes.

The unconscious is the unwritten history of mankind from time unrecorded.

There is no American history. There is no French history. There is no John Wideman. There are all these dreams that are floating around. People construct them and fight with them and criticize them, and the world goes on. I don't think the stars pay much attention.

In absolute terms, I am the most legally persecuted man of all times, in the whole history of mankind, worldwide.

On the stage on which we are observing it, — Universal History — Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality.

The unique impression of Jesus upon mankind - whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world - is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion. Jesus belonged to the race of prophets. He saw with open eyes the mystery of the soul. One man was true to what is in you and me. He, as I think, is the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of man.

Mankind's expectations have to be greater than ourselves and that the further out there we go, the more we find out that it's about you and me.

History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?

Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead did as much for mankind as any president.

The purpose of history is to explain the present - to say why the world around us is the way it is. History tells us what is important in our world, and how it came to be. It tells us what is to be ignored, or discarded. That is true power - profound power. The power to define a whole society.

This was the first Memorial Day [Monday, May 1st, 1865]. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is Black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.

The anchor of all my dreams is the collective wisdom of mankind as a whole.

I never loved totalitarianism and all the ideas of making mankind happy always seemed crazy to me.

I am, as it were, an eye that the cosmos uses to look at itself. The Mind is not mine alone; the Mind is everywhere.

I see a pattern, but my imagination cannot picture the maker of that pattern. I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?

People need their history like they need air and food.

MEN WALK ON THE MOON. To me, this speaks of a time when America wasn't just about the almighty buck. The Russians had put up Sputnik, and the U.S. would not be outdone. I admire that about the American spirit. There's only one spot in history for the first ever of anything.

It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.

I love talking about the Kennedy assasination. The reason I do is because I'm fascinated by it. I'm fascinated that our government could lie to us so blatantly, so obviously for so long, and we do absolutely nothing about it. I think that's interesting in what is ostensibly a democracy. Sarcasm - come on in. People say Bill, quit talking about Kennedy man. It was a long time ago, just let it go, alright? It's a long time ago, just forget it. I'm like, alright, then don't bring up Jesus to me. As long as we're talking shelf life here.

The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity.

Happy the People whose Annals are blank in History Books!

As a historian I understand how histories are written. My enemies will write histories that dismiss me and prove I was unimportant. My friends will write histories that glorify me and prove I was more important than I was. And two generations or three from now, some serious sober historian will write a history that sort of implies I was whoever I was.

What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of their contemporaries!