Walter Benjamin knew that the break in tradition and loss of authority which occurred in his lifetime were irreparable, and he concluded that he had to discover new ways of dealing with the past. In this he became a master when he discovered that the transmissibility of the past had been replaced by the citability and that in place of its authority there had arisen a strange power to settle down, piecemeal, in the present and to deprive it of ‘peace of mind,’ the mindless peace of complacency.

Nothing we use or hear or touch can be expressed in words that equal what is given by the senses.

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world - and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end - is being destroyed.

Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.

Bureaucracy, the rule of nobody.

the rule of Nobody ... is what the political form known as bureaucracy truly is.

Equality...is the result of human organization. We are not born equal.