Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
Walter BenjaminRead
The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe
Interpretation
What this quote means
Progress arises from recognizing and addressing the disasters of the present situation.
Walter Benjamin suggests that the notion of progress cannot be divorced from the understanding of the crises and catastrophes that persist in society. When we accept the current state of affairs as normal or complacent, we inadvertently hinder true progress; instead, acknowledging the catastrophes of our time can drive meaningful change and innovation.
Themes
ProgressCatastropheChangeStatus QuoInnovation
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about social reform, one might say, 'As Walter Benjamin stated, the concept of progress must acknowledge the catastrophes we face today.'
More from Walter Benjamin
All quotes →The illiterate of the future will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph.
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If mythic violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood
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Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.
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Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.
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I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order.
Walter BenjaminRead
Similar quotes
I soon began to sense a fundamental perceptual difficulty among male scholars (and some female ones) for which 'sexism' is too facile a term. It is really an intellectual defect, which might be termed 'patrivincialism' or patrochialism': the assumption that women are a subgroup, that men's culture is the 'real' world, that patriarchy is equivalent to culture and culture to patriarchy, that the 'great' or 'liberalizing' periods of history have been the same for women as for men.
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Potentially evil. Potentially good, too, I suppose. Just this huge powerful potentiality waiting to be shaped.
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Once I found out the secret of the universe. I have forgotten what it was, but I know that the Creator does not take Creation seriously, for I remember that He sat in Space with all His work in front of Him and laughed.
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Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally on our planet, serves a thousand different functions, all of them positive. To make marijuana against the law is like saying that God made a mistake.
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My objection to organized religion is the premature conclusion to ultimate truth that it represents.
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There would not be a perfect likeness of God in the universe if all things were of one grade of being.
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