"The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe"

--

Source : Walter Benjamin, Michael William Jennings (2003). “Selected Writings: 1938-1940”, p.184, Harvard University Press

Walter Benjamin

#Ideas Quotes #Progress Quotes #Status Quo Quotes

“All history teaches us that these questions that we think the pressing ones will be transmuted before they are answered, that they will be replaced by others, and that the very process of discovery will shatter the concepts that we today use to describe our puzzlement.”
“The 'enemy' in golf is tension.”
“There are many people of cosmopolitan temperament who are not from the elites of their societies or the world; and while, for a variety of reasons, I think a cosmopolitan spirit does naturally go with city life, that's the life of a very large proportion of human beings today. And I don't think rural people can't be cosmopolitan, in my sense.”

Source : Source: www.washingtonpost.com
“When you think about it, the end of the world is a little bit like death: We all know it's going to come eventually, and as we get older, we feel we see the signs more and more distinctly.”
“Because of GLHR's crusades... we're beginning to learn the awful truth about workers around the world who are slaving away their lives in sweatshops, who are denied the right to join or form a union in order to fight back and provide a better life for their families.”
“I built up these lumber piles of love, and with fourteen boards each I built little houses, so that your eyes, which I adore and sing to, might live in them. Now that I have declared the foundations of my love, I surrender this century to you: wooden sonnets that rise only because you gave them life.”
“Words are memes that can be pronounced.”
“Take what happened to me in Bali. I planned on going to Ubud, then met a man on an airplane who told me it was too touristy. He gave me an address on the other side of the island, which turned out to be a palace where I lived for four years.”

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