Elias Canetti Quotes

He would like to start from scratch. Where is scratch?

People's fates are simplified by their names.

Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.

Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.

Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true

The act of naming is the great and solemn consolation of mankind

A child. . . opens and closes like a blossom.

Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster.

Death is a scandal. The machine is functioning, we are all hostages

A 'modern' man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.

Words are not too old, only people are too old if they use the same words too frequently.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown.

Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.

The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.

The planet's survival has become so uncertain that any effort, any thought that presupposes an assured future amounts to a mad gamble.

Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing. The oldest law is that which regulates it, and this is still themost important law today and, as such, has remained the basic concern of all movements which have at heart the community of human activities and of human existence in general.

One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.