Karl Kraus Quotes

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

Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples; in others, sex laws.

Nowadays the thief cannot be distinguished from his victim. Neither has any valuable objects on him.

Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored.

There is no more unfortunate creature under the sun than a fetishist who yearns for a woman's shoe and has to settle for the whole woman.

Religion, morality, and patriotism are feelings that are manifested only when they are outraged.

Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.

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

One can translate an editorial but not a poem. For one can go across the border naked but not without one's skin; for, unlike clothes, one cannot get a new skin.

Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought.

The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.

A pun, though despicable in itself, can be the noblest vehicle of an artistic intention by serving as the abbreviation of a wittyview. It can be a social criticism in the form of an epigram.

If you wish to form a clear judgment on your friends, consult your dreams.

In a hollow head there is much room for knowledge.

A good writer does not receive anywhere near the number of poison-pen letters that is commonly assumed. Among a hundred jackassesthere are not ten who will admit to being jackasses, and at most one who will put it in writing.

How powerful social mores are! Only a spider's web lies across the volcano, yet it refrains from erupting.

Humanity is the washerwoman of society that wrings out its dirty laundry in tears.

A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation.

A great deal of learning can be packed into an empty head.

A journalist is stimulated by a deadline. He writes worse when he has time

Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.

An artist should make concessions to the listener. That is why Bruckner dedicated one of his symphonies to the Good Lord.

A fine world in which man reproaches woman with fulfilling his heart's desire!

The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have no other use for language than to make themselves understood.

Penalties serve to deter those who are not inclined to commit any crimes.

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

I trim my opponents to fit my arrows.

Art is something that is so perfectly clear that no one comprehends it.

In Berlin, things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna, they are hopeless but not serious.

Most people only do what they are asked to do; success comes to those who do a little more.

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

On the stage one must not confuse the nature of a personality with the naturalness of a person.

Parliamentarianism means putting political prostitution in barracks.

Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace.

To have no ideas and being able to express them is the essence of journalism.

In case of doubt, decide in favor of what is correct.

Medicine: "Your money and your life!

Hate must make a man productive. Otherwise one might as well love.

Talent is often a defect in character.

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

The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.

Progress, under whose feet the grass mourns and the forest turns into paper from which newspaper plants grow, has subordinated the purpose of life to the means of subsistence and turned us into the nuts and bolts for our tools.

The world has become uglier since it began to look into a mirror every day; so let us settle for the mirror image and do without an inspection of the original.

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

The new psychiatrists say that everything and anything can be traced back to sexual causes. Their method, for example, could be explained as the eroticism of father confessors.

The psychoanalysts pick our dreams as if they were our pockets.

The trouble with Germans is not that they fire shells, but that they engrave them with quotations from Kant.