Karl Kraus: Trending quotes (page 4)

“Life is an effort that deserves a better cause.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Life , Effort

“Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or race hatred. To me all men are equal: there are jackasses everywhere, and I have the same contempt for them all. No petty prejudices!”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Men

“Everyone is stopped and waiting, maitre d's, hansom cab drivers and governments. Everyone's waiting for the end. Let's hope the apocalypse is pleasant, Your Highness.”

Karl Kraus

1899, quoted in Franz Hare, Jahrhundertwende 1900: Untergangsstimmung und Fortschrittsglauben, Stuttgart, 1998, p. 190

Hope , Waiting

“Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

“The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Idea

“A cigar," said the altruist, "a cigar, my good man, I cannot give you. But any time you need a light, just come round, mine is always lit.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Light , Time

“Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence.”

Karl Kraus

“In these great times,” Harry Zohn, trans., In These Great Times (Montreal: 1976), pp. 73-74

“I hear noises which others don't hear and which disturb for me the music of the spheres, which others don't hear either.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Music

“War is at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that the other fellow isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

War , Hope

“I trim my opponents to fit my arrows.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

“I no longer have collaborators. I used to be envious of them. They repel those readers whom I want to lose myself.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

“Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Literature

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

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

People

“Family life is an encroachment on private life.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Life , Family

“The tyranny of necessity grants its slaves three kinds of freedom: opinion free from intellect, entertainment free from art, and orgies free from love.”

Karl Kraus

“In these great times,” Harry Zohn, trans., In These Great Times (Montreal: 1976), p. 74

Love , Art , Freedom

“Most writers have no other quality than the reader: taste. But the latter has the better taste, because he does not write - and the best if he does not read.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Reading

“Lord, forgive them, for they know what they do!”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Forgiveness

“The development of technology will leave only one problem: the infirmity of human nature.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Nature , Problem

“I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Understanding

“Many share my views with me. But I don't share them with them.”

Karl Kraus

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)