Quotes by Benjamin, Walter

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as >>

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a ba >>

These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Stren >>

Quotations about Prediction

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. >>

He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner i >>

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, eac >>

He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say. He is impelled by inertia, rather than curiosity, and nothing is more unlike the submissive apathy with which he hears his fate revealed than the alert dexterity with which the man of courage lays hands on the future.

Benjamin, Walter