Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.

Walter Benjamin
About This Quote

There is much value to knowing your past. Without the knowledge of our past we would be unable to understand who we are and where we come from. Additionally, it can be a valuable tool for learning and for understanding other people, as well as experiences. However, the idea that memories are an instrument for surveying the past is not entirely true.

It is true that you cannot remember everything that happened in your life, even if you try very hard. The reason is that memories do not exist as static things but as living things; they change and adapt with our experiences and therefore we cannot remember exactly what was going on when we were ten years old.

Source: Berlin Childhood Around 1900

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More Quotes By Walter Benjamin
  1. The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.
  2. Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
  3. Truth resists being projected into the realm of knowledge.
  4. Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
  5. 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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