Karl Kraus Quotes
A healthy man is content with a woman. An erotic man is content with a stocking to get to a woman. A sick man is content with thestocking.
If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.
Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.
The trouble with Germans is not that they fire shells, but that they engrave them with quotations from Kant.
He who does without the praise of the crowd will not deny himself an opportunity to be his own adherent.
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.
A philistine is habitually bored and looks for things that won't bore him. An artist finds things boring, but is never bored.
When a man is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, I'm human.' When he behaves like a beast, he says 'After all, I'm only human.
An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.
It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.
Many desire to kill me, and many wish to spend an hour chatting with me. The law protects me from the former.
I and life: The case was settled chivalrously. The opponents parted without having made up.
Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence.
War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.
Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions.
So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes--with the exception of their occupation.
A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.
"A cigar," said the altruist, "a cigar, my good man, I cannot give you. But any time you need a light, just come around; mine is always lit."
Prussia: freedom of movement with a muzzle. Austria: an isolation cell in which screaming is allowed.
The ultimate aim of psychoanalysis is to attribute art to mental weakness, and then to trace the weakness back to the point where, according to analytic dogma, it originated namely, the lavatory.
When I don't make any progress, it is because I have bumped into the wall of language. Then I draw back with a bloody head. And would like to go on.
Language is the only chimera whose illusory power is endless, the inexhaustibility which keeps life from being impoverished. Let men learn to serve language.
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.
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.
