Hugo Ball Quotes & Sayings

I don't want words that other people have invented. All the words are other people's inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own. — Hugo Ball

Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch? — Hugo Ball

What is generally termed reality is, to be precise, a frothy nothing. — Hugo Ball

Punctuality can go to the devil. — Hugo Ball

No such thing as humanity without flaws. — Hugo Ball

It's inspiration that counts, not the drill. — Hugo Ball

Every word that is spoken and sung here (the Cabaret Voltaire) represents at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect. — Hugo Ball

Everywhere, the ethical predicament of our time imposes itself with an urgency which suggests that even the question Have we anything to eat? will be answered not in material but in ethical terms. — Hugo Ball

Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance. — Hugo Ball

We should burn all libraries and allow to remain only that which everyone knows by heart. A beautiful age of the legend would then begin. — Hugo Ball

The symbolic view of things is a consequence of long absorption in images. Is sign language the real language of Paradise? — Hugo Ball