Quotes by
Karl Kraus |
1874-1936 , Austrian writer
Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He directed his satire at the press, German culture, and German and Austrian politics. | 68 quotes | 4,266 visits |
Quotations
| • | Moral responsibility is what is lacking in a man when he demands it of a woman. 28 |
| • | The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he. 20 |
| • | The development of technology will leave only one problem: the infirmity of human nature. 17 |
| • | How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print. 16 |
| • | A man's jealousy is a social institution, a woman's prostitution an instinct. 14 |
| • | Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy. 10 |
| • | The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people meaner. 10 |
| • | War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that the enemy too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost. 8 |
| • | Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis. 7 |
| • | Education is what most people receive, many pass on, and few have. 6 |
| • | A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards. 6 |
| • | Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays. 6 |
| • | Since the law prohibits the keeping of wild animals and I get no enjoyment from pets, I prefer to remain unmarried. 5 |
| • | Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and the dessert of remorse. 5 |
| • | There is no more unfortunate creature under the sun than a fetishist who yearns for a woman's shoe and has to settle for the whole woman. 5 |
| • | Anaesthesia: wounds without pain. Neurasthenia: pain without wounds. 5 |
| • | Mankind became hysterical in the Middle Ages because it poorly repressed the sexual impressions of its Greek boyhood. 5 |
| • | To me all men are equal: there are jackasses everywhere, and I have the same contempt for them all. 5 |
| • | An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half. 4 |
| • | So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes - with the exception of their occupation. 4 |
| • | The immorality of men triumphs over the amorality of women. 4 |
| • | Solitude would be an ideal state if one were able to pick the people one avoids. 4 |
| • | Ingratitude is often disproportionate to the benefaction received. 4 |
| • | Virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower. 4 |
| • | Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over nature. 3 |
| • | Only he is an artist who can make a riddle out of a solution. 3 |
| • | The real truths are those that can be invented. 3 |
| • | The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them. 3 |
| • | Nothing is more unfathomable than a woman's superficiality. 3 |
| • | The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable. 3 |
| • | Squeeze human nature into a straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear! 3 |
| • | Family life is an encroachment on private life. 3 |
| • | You don't even live once. 3 |
| • | Keep your passions in check, but beware of giving your reason free rein. 3 |
| • | Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored. 3 |
| • | In Berlin, things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna, they are hopeless but not serious. 3 |
| • | The “rights” of women are men's duties. 3 |
| • | Most people only do what they are asked to do; success comes to those who do a little more. 3 |
| • | Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work. 3 |
| • | The tyranny of necessity grants its slaves three kinds of freedom: opinion free from intellect, entertainment free from art, and orgies free from love. 2 |
| • | My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious. 2 |
| • | In one ear and out the other: this would still make the head a transit station. What I hear has to go out the same ear. 2 |
| • | Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients. 2 |
| • | Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden. 2 |
| • | The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater the distance from which it looks back. 2 |
| • | My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin. 2 |
| • | Psychoanalysis: a rabbit that was swallowed by a boa constrictor who just wanted to see what it was like in there. 2 |
| • | Psychology is as useless as directions for using poison. 2 |
| • | The woman takes one for all, and the man all for one. 2 |
| • | A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful. 2 |
| • | The superman is a premature ideal, one that presupposes a man. 2 |
| • | Life is an effort that deserves a better cause. 2 |
| • | Lord, forgive them, for they know what they do! 2 |
| • | 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. 2 |
| • | When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest. 2 |
| • | Cosmetics is the science of a woman's cosmos. 2 |
| • | Art is something that is so perfectly clear that no one comprehends it. 2 |
| • | Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram. 2 |
| • | A journalist is stimulated by a deadline. He writes worse when he has time. 2 |
| • | A great deal of learning can be packed into an empty head. 2 |
| • | Morality is the tendency to pour out the baby with the bathwater. 2 |
| • | I am already so popular that anyone who vilifies me becomes more popular than I am. 2 |
| • | Artists have a right to be modest and a duty to be vain. 2 |
Funny Quotes
| • | A woman is, occasionally, quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation. It takes an abundance of imagination, to be sure. 6 |
| • | Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics. 6 |
| • | There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way. 5 |
| • | Medicine: “Your money and your life!” 3 |
| • | I don't like to meddle in my private affairs. 2 |
