Karl Kraus quotes:

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Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former.
Sex education is legitimate in that girls cannot be taught soon enough how children don't come into the world.
How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
Squeeze human nature into the straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear.
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.
Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write.
Journalist: a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time he has, the worse he writes.
Jealousy is a dog's bark which attracts thieves.
An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.
Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.
The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.
Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.
Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?
Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.
A fine world in which man reproaches woman with fulfilling his heart's desire!
There are people who can never forgive a beggar for their not having given him anything.
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.
Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.
The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.
An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.
What are all the orgies of Bacchus when compared to the intoxication of someone who completely surrenders to continence!
Barbershop conversations are irrefutable proof that heads exist for the sake of hair.
When a man is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, I'm human.' When he behaves like a beast, he says 'After all, I'm only human.
If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.
The mission of the press is to spread culture while destroying the attention span.
The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back.
A cigar," said the altruist, "a cigar, my good man, I cannot give you. But any time you need a light, just come around; mine is always lit.
Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.
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.
War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.
Ask your neighbor only about things you know better yourself. Then his advice could prove valuable.
A bibliophile has approximately the same relationship to literature as a philatelist to geography.
Why didn't Eternity have this deformed age aborted ? Its birthmark is the stamp of a newspaper, its medium is printer's ink, and in its veins flows ink.
An illusion of depth often occurs if a blockhead is a muddlehead at the same time
Nationalism is the love which ties me to the blockheads of my country, to the insultors of my way of life, and to the desecrators of my language.
Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?
Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.
The triumph of morality: A thief who has broken into a bedroom claims his sense of shame had been outraged, and by threatening theoccupants with exposure of an immoral act he blackmails them into not bringing charges for burglary.
The unattractive thing about chauvinism is not so much the aversion to other nations as the love of one's own.
Adults who still derive childlike pleasure from hanging gifts of a ready-made education on the Christmas tree of a child waiting outside the door to life do not realize how unreceptive they are making the children to everything that constitutes the true surprise of life.
Language is the only chimera whose illusory power is endless, the inexhaustibility which keeps life from being impoverished. Let men learn to serve language.
The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.
Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.
A comprehensive education is a well-stocked pharmacy: but we have no assurance that potassium cyanide will not be administered fora head cold.
The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.
Humanity is the washerwoman of society that wrings out its dirty laundry in tears.
Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.
I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.
The trouble with Germans is not that they fire shells, but that they engrave them with quotations from Kant.
Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram.
It so often happened to me that someone who shared my opinion kept the larger share for himself that I am now forewarned and offer people only ideas.
Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.
Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.
When I want to go to sleep, I must first get a whole menagerie of voices to shut up. You wouldn't believe what a racket they make in my room.
Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.
It is either a half-truth or a truth and a half.
No ideas and the ability to express them - that's a journalist.
It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.
Immortality is the only thing which doesn't tolerate being postponed.
Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.
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.
If one reads a newspaper only for information, one does not learn the truth, not even the truth about the paper. The truth is that the newspaper is not a statement of contents but the contents themselves; and more than that, it is an instigator.
To me all men are equal: there are jackasses everywhere, and I have the same contempt for them all.
A white lie is always pardonable. But he who tells the truth without compulsion merits no leniency.
There is a cultural taste which tries very hard to get rid of the lice in a fur coat. There is another which tolerates the lice and thinks the coat can be worn with them in it. And finally there is a taste which regards the lice as the most important thing about the coat and consequently places the coat at the lice's disposal.
Hate must make a man productive. Otherwise one might as well love.
Love thy neighbor as thyself. Because each of us is his own neighbor.
So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes--with the exception of their occupation.
Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.
Intercourse with a woman is sometimes a satisfactory substitute for masturbation. But it takes a lot of imagination to make it work.
A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation.
Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy.
Moral responsibility is what is lacking in a man when he demands it of a woman.
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.
Blushing, palpitations, a bad conscience--this is what you get if you haven't sinned.
A philistine is habitually bored and looks for things that won't bore him. An artist finds things boring, but is never bored.
Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples; in others, sex laws.
Prussia: freedom of movement with a muzzle. Austria: an isolation cell in which screaming is allowed.
The difference between psychiatrists and other mentally disturbed people is something like the relationship between concave and convex madness.
The ultimate aim of psychoanalysis is to attribute art to mental weakness, and then to trace the weakness back to the point where, according to analytic dogma, it originated namely, the lavatory.
This is something that I cannot get over -- that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character.
A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.
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
Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.
Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.
I have to do this, as long as it is at all possible; for if those who are obliged to look after commas had always made sure they were in the right place, then Shanghai would not be burning.
Psychoanalysts are father confessors who like to listen to the sins of the father as well.
A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards.
My readers think that I write for the day because my writings are based on the day. So I shall have to wait until my writings are obsolete. Then they may acquire timeliness.
Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.
Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions.
My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.
Sound opinions are valueless. What matters is who holds them.
Virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower.
I and life: The case was settled chivalrously. The opponents parted without having made up.
When a man is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, I'm human.' When he behaves like a beast, he says 'After all, I'm only human.'
I don't like to meddle in my private affairs.
A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.
Education is what most receive, many pass on, and few possess.
A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.
A father's pride, laid on thick, has always made me wish that the fellow had at least experienced some pain during procreation.
A good stylist should have narcissistic enjoyment as he works. He must be able to objectivize his work to such an extent that he catches himself feeling envious and has to jog his memory to find that he is himself the creator. In short, he must display that highest degree of objectivity which the world calls vanity.
A great deal of learning can be packed into an empty head.
A healthy man is content with a woman. An erotic man is content with a stocking to get to a woman. A sick man is content with thestocking.
A historian is not always a prophet facing backwards, but a journalist is always someone who afterwards knew everything beforehand.
A historian is often only a journalist facing backwards.
A journalist is stimulated by a deadline. He writes worse when he has time
A man's eroticism is a woman's sexuality.
A man's jealousy is a social institution; a woman's prostitution is an instinct.
A plagiarist should be made to copy the author a hundred times.
A school without grades must have been concocted by someone who was drunk on non-alcoholic wine.
A snob is unreliable. The work he praises might just be good.
An artist should make concessions to the listener. That is why Bruckner dedicated one of his symphonies to the Good Lord.
Anesthesia: wounds without pain. Neurasthenia: pain without wounds.
Art is something that is so perfectly clear that no one comprehends it.
Artists have a right to be modest and a duty to be vain.
Children today laugh at fathers who tell them about dragons. It is necessary to make fear a required subject; otherwise children will never learn it.
Contemporaries live from second hand to mouth.
Cosmetics is the science of a woman's cosmos.
Diplomacy is a game of chess in which the nations are checkmated.

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