Karl Kraus citations

Page 3

“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.”

“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!”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“I trim my opponents to fit my arrows.”

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

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

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

“Family life is an encroachment on private life.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“What is the Ninth Symphony compared to a Tin Pan Alley hit played on a hurdy-gurdy and a memory?”

“A man's jealousy is a social institution, a woman's prostitution an instinct.”

“Nestroy's words ought to apply to an artist and an idea: "I have made a prisoner, and he won't let go of me!"”

“To be human is erroneous.”

“Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram. ”

“One cannot dictate an aphorism to a typist. It would take too long. An aphorism never coincides with the truth: it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths. ”

“The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he.”

“How unreliable is the woman caught being faithful! Today she is faithful to you, tomorrow to another.”

“The extraordinary ability of a woman to forget is not the same as the talent of a lady not to be able to remember.”

“When the word "peace" was uttered for the first time, there was panic at the stock exchange. They screamed in pain: "We've been earning! Leave us the war! We've earned the war!"”