Karl Kraus famous quotes

Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.
-- Karl Kraus

#People #Solitude #Would Be

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.
-- Karl Kraus

#Thinking #People #Devil

Intercourse with a woman is sometimes a satisfactory substitute for masturbation. But it takes a lot of imagination to make it work.
-- Karl Kraus

#Work #Imagination #Sometimes

A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards.
-- Karl Kraus

#Motivational #Success #Strong

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.
-- Karl Kraus

#Life #Beautiful #Writing

Journalist: a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time he has, the worse he writes.
-- Karl Kraus

#Writing #Skills #Ideas

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.
-- Karl Kraus

#Common #Language #Turns

To be sure, the dog is loyal. But why, on that account, should we take him as an example? He is loyal to man, not to other dogs.
-- Karl Kraus

#Dog #Men #Example

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.
-- Karl Kraus

#Mother #Language

Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden
-- Karl Kraus

#Censorship #Satire #Forbidden

I saw a poet chase a butterfly in a meadow. He put his net on a bench where a boy sat reading a book. It's a misfortune that it is usually the other way round.
-- Karl Kraus

#Reading #Book #Butterfly

A historian is often only a journalist facing backwards.
-- Karl Kraus

#History #Historian #Backwards

A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.
-- Karl Kraus

#Beauty #Beautiful #Women

Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy.
-- Karl Kraus

#Mental Illness #Illness #Therapy

Progress, under whose feet the grass mourns and the forest turns into paper from which newspaper plants grow, has subordinated the purpose of life to the means of subsistence and turned us into the nuts and bolts for our tools.
-- Karl Kraus

#Mean #Nuts #Feet

Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.
-- Karl Kraus

#Art #Science #Light

Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.
-- Karl Kraus

#Stupid #Earthquakes #Force

Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.
-- Karl Kraus

#Literature #World #Sexuality

Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.
-- Karl Kraus

#Mean #Opportunity #Democracy

Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.
-- Karl Kraus

#Success #Wise #Education

Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.
-- Karl Kraus

#Country #Literature #Might

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
-- Karl Kraus

#Lying #War #Believe

Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.
-- Karl Kraus

#Christian #Lust #Morality

The trouble with Germans is not that they fire shells, but that they engrave them with quotations from Kant.
-- Karl Kraus

#Fire #Shells #Literature

Sex education is legitimate in that girls cannot be taught soon enough how children don't come into the world.
-- Karl Kraus

#Girl #Sex #Children

Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write.
-- Karl Kraus

#Writing #Literature #Journalist

Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?
-- Karl Kraus

#Book #Reading #Book Reading

I knew a man who carried his education in his vest pocket because there was more room there than in his head.
-- Karl Kraus

#Education #Men #Pockets

A man's jealousy is a social institution; a woman's prostitution is an instinct.
-- Karl Kraus

#Jealousy #Sex #Men

Children today laugh at fathers who tell them about dragons. It is necessary to make fear a required subject; otherwise children will never learn it.
-- Karl Kraus

#Children #Fear #Father

Let my style capture all the sounds of my time. This should make it an annoyance to my contemporaries. But later generations should hold it to their ears like a seashell in which there is the music of an ocean of mud.
-- Karl Kraus

#Music #Ocean #Style

Many women would like to dream with men without sleeping with them. Someone should point out to them that this is utterly impossible.
-- Karl Kraus

#Dream #Sleep #Men

I am not for women but against men.
-- Karl Kraus

#Men #Men And Women

When I take up my pen, nothing can happen to me. Fate, remember that.
-- Karl Kraus

#Fate #Remember #Pens

What are all the orgies of Bacchus when compared to the intoxication of someone who completely surrenders to continence!
-- Karl Kraus

#Sex #Excess #Surrender

Keep your passions in check, but beware of giving your reason free rein.
-- Karl Kraus

#Passion #Giving #Emotion

It is the mission of the press to disseminate intellect and at the same time destroy receptivity to it.
-- Karl Kraus

#Journalism #Missions #Intellect

There is a shortage of clerks. Everyone is going into journalism.
-- Karl Kraus

#Clerks #Journalism #Shortage

The pimp is the executive organ of immorality. The executive organ of morality is the blackmailer.
-- Karl Kraus

#Pimp #Morality #Executives

A historian is not always a prophet facing backwards, but a journalist is always someone who afterwards knew everything beforehand.
-- Karl Kraus

#Journalism #Prophet #Historian

A school without grades must have been concocted by someone who was drunk on non-alcoholic wine.
-- Karl Kraus

#Education #Wine #School

They judge lest they be judged.
-- Karl Kraus

#Judging #Morality #Judged

Morality is a burglar's tool whose merit lies in never being left behind at the scene of the crime.
-- Karl Kraus

#Lying #Tools #Merit

What the teachers digest, the pupils eat.
-- Karl Kraus

#Education #Teacher #Pupils

A comprehensive education is a well-stocked pharmacy: but we have no assurance that potassium cyanide will not be administered fora head cold.
-- Karl Kraus

#Education #Potassium #Cyanide

Morality is the tendency to pour out the baby with the bathwater.
-- Karl Kraus

#Baby #Morality #Tendencies

I can say with pride that I have spent days and nights not reading anything, and that with unflagging energy I use every moment toacquire gradually an encyclopedic lack of education.
-- Karl Kraus

#Education #Reading #Pride

Sorrento, August. For two weeks now I haven't heard a German word or understood an Italian one. This way one can manage to live with people; everything goes like clockwork and no irksome misunderstanding can arise.
-- Karl Kraus

#Communication #Italian #August

The triumph of morality: A thief who has broken into a bedroom claims his sense of shame had been outraged, and by threatening theoccupants with exposure of an immoral act he blackmails them into not bringing charges for burglary.
-- Karl Kraus

#Broken #Triumph #Thieves

What do people have against convicts? Is living together in the pen of freedom, where young people engage in mutual psychology, any more beautiful?
-- Karl Kraus

#Beautiful #Freedom #People

Humanity and bestiality: when will the former finally be uttered with the flavor of hate and the latter with the flavor of love? Does a lion tear his fellow lion to pieces?
-- Karl Kraus

#Hate #Humanity #Tears

My request that my writing be read twice has aroused great indignation. Unjustly so. After all, I do not ask that they be read once.
-- Karl Kraus

#Reading #Writing #Request

One must read all writers twice--the good as well as the bad. The one kind will be recognized; the other, unmasked.
-- Karl Kraus

#Reading #Kind #Wells

When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting.
-- Karl Kraus

#Reading #Writing #Acting

In a well-run mental household there ought to be a thorough cleaning at the threshold of consciousness a few times a year.
-- Karl Kraus

#Running #Years #Cleaning

A white lie is always pardonable. But he who tells the truth without compulsion merits no leniency.
-- Karl Kraus

#Truth #Lying #White

Who is going to cast out an error to which he has given birth and replace it with an adopted truth?
-- Karl Kraus

#Truth #Errors #Birth

Language is the only chimera whose illusory power is endless, the inexhaustibility which keeps life from being impoverished. Let men learn to serve language.
-- Karl Kraus

#Men #Language #Endless

Let language be the divining rod that finds the sources of thought.
-- Karl Kraus

#Language #Source

I have drawn from the well of language many a thought which I do not have and which I could not put into words.
-- Karl Kraus

#Ideas #Language #Wells

I master only the language of others. Mine does with me what it wants.
-- Karl Kraus

#Style #Doe #Want

The blind won't admit that I have eyes in my head, and the deaf say that I'm dumb.
-- Karl Kraus

#Communication #Eye #Dumb

If you wish to form a clear judgment on your friends, consult your dreams.
-- Karl Kraus

#Friendship #Dream #Wish

Lord, forgive them, for they know what they do!
-- Karl Kraus

#Forgiveness #Forgiving #Lord

A good stylist should have narcissistic enjoyment as he works. He must be able to objectivize his work to such an extent that he catches himself feeling envious and has to jog his memory to find that he is himself the creator. In short, he must display that highest degree of objectivity which the world calls vanity.
-- Karl Kraus

#Memories #Vanity #Objectivity

A good writer does not receive anywhere near the number of poison-pen letters that is commonly assumed. Among a hundred jackassesthere are not ten who will admit to being jackasses, and at most one who will put it in writing.
-- Karl Kraus

#Writing #Numbers #Doe

Humanity is the washerwoman of society that wrings out its dirty laundry in tears.
-- Karl Kraus

#Dirty #Humanity #Tears

To be human is erroneous.
-- Karl Kraus

#Errors #Humanity #Humans

Nothing is more horrible than my self in the mirror of hysteria. Nothing is more vulgar than my style in the hands of another. Toimitate me is to punish me.
-- Karl Kraus

#Mirrors #Self #Hands

A plagiarist should be made to copy the author a hundred times.
-- Karl Kraus

#Plagiarism #Hundred #Made

A bibliophile has approximately the same relationship to literature as a philatelist to geography.
-- Karl Kraus

#Book #Literature #Geography

Satire chooses and knows no objects. It arises by fleeing from them and their forcing themselves upon it.
-- Karl Kraus

#Fleeing #Satire #Arise

Most critics write critiques which are by the authors they write critiques about. That would not be so bad, but then most authorswrite works which are by the critics who write critiques about them.
-- Karl Kraus

#Writing #Criticism #Critics

A poem is good until one knows by whom it is.
-- Karl Kraus

The extraordinary ability of a woman to forget is not the same as the talent of a lady not to be able to remember.
-- Karl Kraus

#Women #Able #Talent

It is not true that one cannot live without a woman. It is simply that one cannot have lived without one.
-- Karl Kraus

#Women

There is a cultural taste which tries very hard to get rid of the lice in a fur coat. There is another which tolerates the lice and thinks the coat can be worn with them in it. And finally there is a taste which regards the lice as the most important thing about the coat and consequently places the coat at the lice's disposal.
-- Karl Kraus

#Thinking #Important #Trying

If by day art is in the service of business, the evenings are devoted to the businessman's enjoyment of it. That is asking a lot of art, but art and the businessman make it work.
-- Karl Kraus

#Art #Business #Asking

In a hollow head there is much room for knowledge.
-- Karl Kraus

#Knowledge #Stupidity #Rooms

Religion, morality, and patriotism are feelings that are manifested only when they are outraged.
-- Karl Kraus

#Feelings #Patriotism #Religion

How unreliable is the woman caught being faithful! Today she is faithful to you, tomorrow to another.
-- Karl Kraus

#Faithful #Today #Tomorrow

In the theater one must sit in such a way that one sees the audience as a dark mass. Then it cannot bother one more than it does an actor. Nothing is more disturbing than being able to distinguish individuals in the crowd.
-- Karl Kraus

#Dark #Individual #Bother

Sound opinions are valueless. What matters is who holds them.
-- Karl Kraus

#Opinion #Valueless

Not greeting people isn't enough. One also doesn't greet people one doesn't know.
-- Karl Kraus

#People #Enough #Greetings

Nowadays the thief cannot be distinguished from his victim. Neither has any valuable objects on him.
-- Karl Kraus

#Victim #Valuable

If someone calls me vain and mean, I know that he trusts me and has something to confess to me.
-- Karl Kraus

#Trust #Mean #Vain

Medicine: "Your money and your life!
-- Karl Kraus

#Money

A father's pride, laid on thick, has always made me wish that the fellow had at least experienced some pain during procreation.
-- Karl Kraus

#Pain #Father #Pride

Many talents preserve their precociousness right into old age.
-- Karl Kraus

#Age #Talent #Old Age

Mankind became hysterical in the Middle Ages because it poorly repressed the sexual impressions of its Greek boyhood.
-- Karl Kraus

#Greek #Age #Hysterical

Ask your neighbor only about things you know better yourself. Then his advice could prove valuable.
-- Karl Kraus

#Advice #Neighbor #Valuable

The new psychiatrists say that everything and anything can be traced back to sexual causes. Their method, for example, could be explained as the eroticism of father confessors.
-- Karl Kraus

#Father #Psychiatry #Psychiatrist

Since the day man first tried to conquer space, the earth has been mobilizing.
-- Karl Kraus

#Men #Earth #Conquer

An artist should make concessions to the listener. That is why Bruckner dedicated one of his symphonies to the Good Lord.
-- Karl Kraus

#Artist #Lord #Dedicated

I would have stage-fright if I had to speak with every one of the people before whom I speak.
-- Karl Kraus

#People #Speak

Prussia: freedom of movement with a muzzle. Austria: an isolation cell in which screaming is allowed.
-- Karl Kraus

#Freedom #Isolation #Scream

That an author takes a bow is not humility but presumption. What does the paleface want on the stage afterwards? But before the performance he had even less business there--and paying him royalties is equivalent to cheating the actors.
-- Karl Kraus

#Cheating #Humility #Royalty

To me it's still a greater miracle when a fly flies than when a human being undertakes to do so.
-- Karl Kraus

#Miracle #Flight

Many desire to kill me, and many wish to spend an hour chatting with me. The law protects me from the former.
-- Karl Kraus

#Wish #Desire #Popularity

Diplomacy is a game of chess in which the nations are checkmated.
-- Karl Kraus

#Chess #Diplomacy