Karl Kraus Quotes

Quotes about:

• The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.

  Karl Kraus

  Funny, Clever, Stupid

  43 Copy quote

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

  Karl Kraus

  Thinking, People, Devil

  "Die Fackel", no. 277/78 (March 31, 1909), translated in "Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry" by Thomas Szasz, (Ch. 8), 1970.

  52 Copy quote

• Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.

  Karl Kraus

  People, Solitude, Would Be

  49 Copy quote

• 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, Moral Corruption, Literature

  57 Copy quote

• The difference between psychiatrists and other mentally disturbed people is something like the relationship between concave and convex madness.

  Karl Kraus

  Differences, People, Madness

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

  3 Copy quote

• Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.

  Karl Kraus

  Newspapers, Fortune, Metaphysics

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

  57 Copy quote

• A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards.

  Karl Kraus

  Motivational, Success, Strong

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

  25 Copy quote

• It is uplifting to lose one?s faith in a reality which looks the way it is described in a newspaper.

  Karl Kraus

  Uplifting, Reality, Looks

  1 Copy quote

• One's need for loneliness is not satisfied if one sits at a table alone. There must be empty chairs as well.

  Karl Kraus

  Loneliness, Solitude, Needs

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

  6 Copy quote

• 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, Literature

  Die Fackel, 2 July 1907

  36 Copy quote

• Nationalism is the love which ties me to the blockheads of my country, to the insultors of my way of life, and to the desecrators of my language.

  Karl Kraus

  Country, Ties, Patriotism

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

  14 Copy quote

• When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest.

  Karl Kraus

  Religion, Atheism, Society

  20 Copy quote

• Since the law prohibits the keeping of wild animals and I get no enjoyment from pets, I prefer to remain unmarried.

  Karl Kraus

  Marriage, Animal, Law

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  1 Copy quote

• Moral responsibility is what is lacking in a man when he demands it of a woman.

  Karl Kraus

  Responsibility, Men, Demand

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

  13 Copy quote

• How do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists, then believe what they read.

  Karl Kraus

  War, Lying, Believe

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  52 Copy quote

• There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way.

  Karl Kraus

  Beauty, Beautiful, Looks

  "'Sprüche und Widersprüche' ('Dicta and Contradictions')". Book by Karl Kraus, translated by Richard Hanser, 1909.

  1 Copy quote

• Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.

  Karl Kraus

  Time, People, Democracy

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

  5 Copy quote

• Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.

  Karl Kraus

  Mean, Opportunity, Democracy

  10 Copy quote

• The heroes of obtrusiveness, people with whom no soldier would lie down in the trenches, though he has to submit to being interviewed by them, break into recently abandoned royal castles so that they can report, "We got there first!" It would be far less shameful to be paid for committing atrocities than for fabricating them.

  Karl Kraus

  Lying, Hero, People

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

  4 Copy quote

• A philistine is habitually bored and looks for things that won't bore him. An artist finds things boring, but is never bored.

  Karl Kraus

  Art, Boredom, Looks

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

  4 Copy quote

• This is something that I cannot get over -- that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character.

  Karl Kraus

  Art, Writing, Character

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

  14 Copy quote

• Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

  Karl Kraus

  Mother, Language

  Karl Kraus (1977). “No Compromise: Selected Writings of Karl Kraus”, Frederick Ungar

  11 Copy quote

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