When did Walter Benjamin say "We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector"?
score:7
It would appear that this may be a case of a paraphrase which became more popular and replaced the actual quote in our internet copy and paste, hallmark-quote based consciousness.
Researching online can find the quote used in several books, not just quotation sites. The first one I looked at was Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life by Timothy W. Ryback :
Benjamin proposed that a private library serves as a permanent and credible witness to the character of its creator, leading him to the following philosophical conceit: we collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector. "Not that they come alive in him," Benjamin posited, "It is he who lives in them."
Note the quotations only on a certain portion of this text. Unfortunately no citation as to the source here.
Another work also contains your quote, The Perils of Print Culture: Book, Print and Publishing History in Theory and Practice by Jason McElligott
Walter Benjamin recognized that we collect books in the belief that we are preserving them, when it is actually the books which preserve the collector, his mindset, his milieu and the society that he inhabited.
This work actually included a footnote, citing the source, which is, as you suspected,
'Unpacking my Library: A talk about Book Collecting', in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (Frankfurt am Main, 1955; 1999 edition by Pimlico of London).
A version of Illuminations can be borrowed from Archive.org, and the only portion of actual text I find therein is that which was directly quoted by the first source. From the final paragraph of the essay (pg. 69, emphasis mine):
For inside him there are spirits, or at least little genii, which have seen to it that for a collector - and I mean a real collector, a collector as he ought to be - ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them. So I have erected one of his dwellings, with books as the building stones, before you, and now he is going to disappear inside, as is only fitting.
More post
- 📝 Can anyone help to identify and date this uniform or the medals?
- 📝 Was the Horo Cavalry "Balloon cloak" effective?
- 📝 What does "Brown-Bread Eater" mean when used as an insult?
- 📝 How did thieves get into Egyptian pyramids?
- 📝 How was the administration of the liberated part of The Netherlands organised between 12 September 1944 and 5 May 1945?
- 📝 Why was the last battle of the War of 1812 fought fully half a year after the official end of the war?
- 📝 Which were the four villages in Attica affected by Cleisthenes' reforms? What happened to them?
- 📝 Where can I find an English translation of 'Il Fioretto della Bibbia'?
- 📝 Was there an East German counterpart to the Goethe-Institut?
- 📝 Was American slavery economically advantageous primarily due to being able to also sell offspring?
- 📝 How widespread was the notion that space travel was impossible prior to the successful launch of Sputnik 1?
- 📝 What is the reasoning behind these huge numbers for participants in the Battle of Grunwald 1410?
- 📝 Were the Hashemite kings of Iraq and Transjordan considered foreign?
- 📝 Does the ending of "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" by Alfred Lansing sound reasonable?
- 📝 How old was the youngest white person sentenced to death in the U.S.A?
- 📝 How do repeating historical conflicts get resolved?
- 📝 Why did the French nobility adopt Calvinism?
- 📝 Could someone who had joined a monastery decide to leave?
- 📝 Why didn't the US produce stamped weapons like the Germans during WW2?
- 📝 What were the German "general" ranks in World War II?
- 📝 Historical examples and numbers for the value of ‘Jizya’ levied by Muslim states
- 📝 What unknown laws were mentioned in earlier Coronation Oaths of England?
- 📝 Why is the heir to the British throne called "Prince of Wales"?
- 📝 Is there evidence that scrubbing floors on one's hands and knees was a commonplace drudgery for women in the past?
- 📝 Was the American Civil War the first to include multiple multi-day battles?
- 📝 Why were Chinese divisions undersized?
- 📝 What were the dates & details of assassinations in Vienna, Austria of Bulgarian defectors Veselin Stoyov, Peter Niezamov, and Ivan Kolev (circa 1974)?
- 📝 How reliable and accurate is the Nuremberg Chronicle?
- 📝 In Battle of Zama, how did Hannibal's use of war elephants lead to a Roman Victory?
- 📝 Need help identifying 2 old coins? Struck coins, one with two standing human figures facing each other
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 When did Walter Benjamin say "We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector"?
- 📝 Why did Mussolini say that people are not really free if they don't have access to the ocean?
- 📝 When did people decide that all caps means the writer is shouting?
- 📝 When did the Romans finally acknowledge that they were living in an empire?
- 📝 How did the American Civil War help the U.S economy recover from the Panic of 1857 given that civil wars are extremely destructive?
- 📝 When did books first become affordable to the general population?
- 📝 When did the English and Americans realize that vegetables were healthy?
- 📝 What did other European powers say when Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Tordesillas?
- 📝 When was it discovered that the stars are not all lying on the same plane?
- 📝 Did JFK really say "Hitler is one of the greatest men…one of the most significant figures that ever lived"?
- 📝 Are there ways to measure "how much power did "Russia" lose when the Soviet Union broke up?"
- 📝 Did Radio Free Europe say that the Allies would come to the rescue during the Hungarian Revolution?
- 📝 When and where did Louis Blanc say the famous "from each according to his abilities..."?
- 📝 Did Theodore Roosevelt ever say the "things that will destroy America" quote?
- 📝 Why did Robert E. Lee say that George McClellan was the best general he ever faced?
- 📝 When did Lincoln claim that "Vicksburg is the key" to winning the civil war?
- 📝 When did people start saying about the US that "it's a free country"?
- 📝 When did it become openly known that Wilson supported the Balfour Declaration?
- 📝 When and where did it first became usual that the ID Card holder signed his card?
- 📝 Where and when did the legend that the Auld Alliance dates back to 809 AD begin?
- 📝 Why and when did countries develop long names that include the form of government?
- 📝 Did Austrian chief of staff Franz Riml say that the only way to correct the Russophile Ukrainians is to exterminate them?
- 📝 When did the German people learn that they had a large, powerful military, in violation of the Versailles Treaty?
- 📝 Do NKVD files say that during WWII, Soviet leadership knew about the rape of Soviet women liberated from labour camps and did nothing to stop it?
- 📝 Did the chronicler William of Malmesbury write that William Adelin threatened to make Anglo-Saxons 'draw a plow like cattle' when he became king?
- 📝 When did England make a statute that barred foreigners from inheriting the throne?
- 📝 When did the United Kingdom become "United" rather than merely united? (I.e., that word became part of its name.)
- 📝 Did monotheistic religions play a role in shaping the belief that political power should be in the hands of an all powerful monarch?
- 📝 When did the popular idea begin that the 21st century would commence on 1st January 2000?
- 📝 Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union when he was still busy fighting the United Kingdom?