Karl Kraus citations

Page 2

“Malades, la plupart le sont. Très peu se figurent en connaître la cause. Ce sont les psychologues.”

“La liberté de la presse est l'ange exterminateur de la liberté.”

“Les opinions sont contagieuses; la pensée est un miasme.”

“Si je dois écrire, je doute de la clarté du soleil, dont je suis convaincu.”

“Il y a des écrivains qui peuvent déjà exprimer en vingt pages ce pour quoi il me faut parfois même deux lignes.”

“Qui émet des opinions ne doit pas se laisser surprendre en flagrant délit de contradictions. Qui a des pensées pense aussi entre les contradictions.”

“Les hommes sont des sauvages restaurés.”

“A "seducer" who boasts of initiating women into the mystery of love is like a stranger who arrives at a railroad station and offers to show the sights to a tourist guide.”

“Solitude would be an ideal state if one were able to pick the people one avoids.”

“Education is what most people receive, many pass on, and few have.”

“I like to hold a monologue with women. But a dialogue with myself is more stimulating.”

“When someone has behaved like an animal, he says: "I'm only human!" But when he is treated like an animal, he says: "I'm human, too!"”

“Psychoanalysis: a rabbit that was swallowed by a boa constrictor who just wanted to see what it was like in there.”

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

“What is my love? That I amalgamate the bad features of a woman into a good picture. And my hatred? That I see the bad features in the picture of a bad man.”

“True jealously wants not only fidelity, but the proof of fidelity as an imaginable situation. A jealous man is not content with his beloved not being unfaithful. Precisely that which he is not doing does not leave him in peace. But since there is no proving what is not done and the jealous man insists on proof, he ends up settling on proof of unfaithfulness.”

“If I return some people's greetings, I do so only to give them their greeting back.”

“Many things I am experiencing I already remember.”

“So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes - with the exception of their occupation.”

“Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over nature.”

“Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and the dessert of remorse.”

“To divide people into sadists and masochists is almost as foolish as dividing them into eaters and digesters. In all cases one must disregard abnormalities; after all, there are people who are better at digesting than they are at eating and vice versa. As regards masochism and sadism, it is safe to say that a healthy person displays both perversities. The only ugly thing in each case is the word. The one derived from the novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is particularly degrading, and it is hard not to let one's taste for things be spoiled by the designation. Nevertheless, a man with an artistic imagination will manage to let an authentic woman turn him into a masochist and an inauthentic one into a sadist. One knocks the latter's educated unnaturalness out of her until the woman is revealed. If she already is a woman, the only thing left to do is adore her.”

“It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.”

“Progress … has subordinated the purpose of life to the means of subsistence and turned us into the nuts and bolts for our tools.”

“Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.”

“Psychology is as useless as directions for using poison.”

“My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.”

“Sound opinions are valueless. What matters is who holds them.”

“Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.”

“Women at least have elegant dresses. But what can men use to cover their emptiness?”

“Keep your passions in check, but beware of giving your reason free rein.”

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

“We are sacrificing ourselves for our ready-made goods; we are consumers and live in such a way that the means may consume the end.”

“When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting.”

“The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life.”

“The superman is a premature ideal, one that presupposes a man.”