Only He Who Can View His Own Past As An Abortion Sprung From Compulsion And Need Can Use It To Full Advantage In The Present. For What One Has Lived Is At Best Comparable To A Beautiful Statue Which Has Had All Its Limbs Knocked Off In Transit, And Now Yields Nothing But The Precious Block Out Of Which The Image Of One's Future Must Be Hewn.

-Walter Benjamin

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Only He Who Can View His Own

Walter Benjamin

Only He Who Can View His Own Past As An Abortion Sprung From Compulsion And Need Can Use It To Full Advantage In The Present. For What One Has Lived Is At Best Comparable To A Beautiful Statue Which Has Had All Its Limbs Knocked Off In Transit, And Now Yields Nothing But The Precious Block Out Of Which The Image Of One's Future Must Be Hewn.

Topic

Beautiful

Block

Past

Language Has Unmistakably Made Plain That Memory Is Not An Instrument For Exploring 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.

Memories

Lying

Past