What matters for the dialectician is having the wind of world history in his sails. Thinking for him means: to set the sails. It is the way they are set that matters. Words are his sails. The way they are set turns them into concepts.

Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin

dialectics history thinking

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The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious.

— Walter Benjamin

There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.

— Walter Benjamin

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To align oneself with the real while intimating that others are at play, approximate, or in imitation can feel good. But any fixed claim on realness, especially when it is tied to an identity, also has a finger in psychosis.

— Maggie Nelson

The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.

— Walter Benjamin

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Glory to the logos, my friends! Long live dialectics! Let the party begin! May the verb be with you!

— Laurent Binet

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