“The enslavement of language in prattle is joined by the enslavement of things in folly almost as its inevitable consequence.”

—  Walter Benjamin

Zur Verknechtung der Sprache im Geschwätz tritt die Verknechtung der Dinge in der Narretei fast als deren unausbleibliche Folge.
"On Language as Such and on the Language of Man" (1916), translated by E. Jephcott, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Vol. 1 (1996), p. 72

Original

Zur Verknechtung der Sprache im Geschwätz tritt die Verknechtung der Dinge in der Narretei fast als deren unausbleibliche Folge.

Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen

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Walter Benjamin 70
German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892… 1892–1940

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