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
- 📝 How did the news of the reality Nazi concentration camps reach the United State's mainstream? What were the waves of awareness and when?
- 📝 When did Robert Briscoe die?
- 📝 Why were so few Koreans enlisted in the Japanese Army before conscription was introduced in 1944?
- 📝 What was the difference between a WWII Engineer General Service Regiment and a Service Unit?
- 📝 Did Anglo-Saxons make use of large-scale, non-military Roman ruins?
- 📝 What were women doing at the Battle of Dorylaeum during the First Crusade?
- 📝 How much damage was USSR already capable of doing by the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis?
- 📝 States calling themselves a dictatorship
- 📝 Who were the candidates in the consular elections for 80 BC in Rome?
- 📝 Were there commercials in the original broadcast of the moon landings, and how much did they go for?
- 📝 How were large sums of money carried/transmitted prior to the 1940s or so?
- 📝 Who was Mathilda von Merckens and which was her castle?
- 📝 The Chronology Challenge: earliest verifiable date of a historical event?
- 📝 Can someone tell me more about this dagger with a bronze hilt?
- 📝 Technology and status symbols that predate language
- 📝 Were British fears of Russia using Afghanistan as a staging post for an invasion of India unfounded?
- 📝 Who was the train conductor who threw Gandhi from a first class train coach in South Africa?
- 📝 What was the role of Nigeria in Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
- 📝 Louis XIV of France, "L'État, c'est moi", and the royal 'we'
- 📝 What made the English the dominant power of the British Isles?
- 📝 Was there Western tactical air support during the Battle for Berlin?
- 📝 Recommended order for reading Horatio Hornblower series?
- 📝 How long did it take to make a 16th century arrow?
- 📝 Were the Gestapo & SS voluntary organisations?
- 📝 Is it true that slavery was endemic in Sub-Saharan Africa previous to the establishment of the trans-Atlantic slave trade?
- 📝 How many 'pubs' (alehouses, inns and taverns) were there in England in 1577?
- 📝 During the Soviet era, were people charged with crimes able to hire lawyers of their own?
- 📝 What was the League of Sublime and Perfect Masters?
- 📝 Historically, when (and why) did Ganga become a holy river? Is it after Sarasvati dried up?
- 📝 Machine gun specs in WW1
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?