Karl Kraus Quotes & Sayings

In a hollow head there is much room for knowledge. — Karl Kraus

Jealousy is a dog's bark which attracts thieves. — Karl Kraus

If someone calls me vain and mean, I know that he trusts me and has something to confess to me. — Karl Kraus

It is the mission of the press to disseminate intellect and at the same time destroy receptivity to it. — Karl Kraus

When I don't make any progress, it is because I have bumped into the wall of language. Then I draw back with a bloody head. And would like to go on. — Karl Kraus

The psychoanalysts pick our dreams as if they were our pockets. — Karl Kraus

Cosmetics is the science of a woman's cosmos. — Karl Kraus

One cannot dictate an aphorism to a typist. It would take too long. — Karl Kraus

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

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 he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off. — Karl Kraus

Many share my views with me. But I don't share them with them. — Karl Kraus

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

The development of technology will leave only one problem: the infirmity of human nature. — Karl Kraus

What the teachers digest, the pupils eat. — Karl Kraus

A man's jealousy is a social institution; a woman's prostitution is an instinct. — Karl Kraus

The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back. — Karl Kraus

Heinrich Heine so loosened the corsets of the German language that today every little salesman can fondle her breasts. — Karl Kraus

Blushing, palpitations, a bad conscience
this is what you get if you haven't sinned. — Karl Kraus

They judge lest they be judged. — Karl Kraus

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

The art of an actress is sublimated sexuality. But off the stage the fire must be able to reconvert the steam into body. — Karl Kraus

There is no more unhappy being under the sun than a fetishist who pines for a boot and has to content himself with an entire woman. — Karl Kraus

Truth is a clumsy servant that breaks the dishes while washing them. — Karl Kraus

One must read all writers twice
the good as well as the bad. The one kind will be recognized; the other, unmasked. — Karl Kraus

It is uplifting to lose one?s faith in a reality which looks the way it is described in a newspaper. — Karl Kraus

How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read. — Karl Kraus

To me it's still a greater miracle when a fly flies than when a human being undertakes to do so. — Karl Kraus

A historian is not always a prophet facing backwards, but a journalist is always someone who afterwards knew everything beforehand. — Karl Kraus

Talent is often a defect in character. — Karl Kraus

Moral responsibility is what is lacking in a man when he demands it of a woman. — Karl Kraus

A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful. — Karl Kraus

One of the most widespread diseases is diagnosis. — Karl Kraus

There are two kinds of writers, those who are and those who aren't. With the first, content and form belong together like soul and body; with the second, they match each other like body and clothes. — Karl Kraus

Psychology is as useless as directions for using poison. — Karl Kraus

Technology is a servant who makes so much noise cleaning up in the next room that his master cannot make music. — Karl Kraus

To be human is erroneous. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

The press, that goiter of the world, swells up with the desire for conquest and bursts with the achievements which every day brings. A week has room for the boldest climax of the human drive for expansion. — Karl Kraus

Mankind became hysterical in the Middle Ages because it poorly repressed the sexual impressions of its Greek boyhood. — Karl Kraus

Social reform is the desperate decision to remove corns from a person suffering from cancer. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

A plagiarist should be made to copy the author a hundred times. — Karl Kraus

Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match. — Karl Kraus

Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid. — Karl Kraus

Through my satire I make little people so big that afterwards they are worthy objects of my satire and no one can reproach me any longer. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

That an author takes a bow is not humility but presumption. What does the paleface want on the stage afterwards? But before the performance he had even less business there
and paying him royalties is equivalent to cheating the actors. — Karl Kraus

Education is what most receive, many pass on, and few possess. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

The pimp is the executive organ of immorality. The executive organ of morality is the blackmailer. — Karl Kraus

It is regarded as normal to consecrate virginity in general and to lust for its destruction in particular. — Karl Kraus

A poem is good until one knows by whom it is. — Karl Kraus

I trim my opponents to fit my arrows. — Karl Kraus

Many women would like to dream with men without sleeping with them. Someone should point out to them that this is utterly impossible. — Karl Kraus

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

The immorality of men triumphs over the amorality of women. — Karl Kraus

You don't even live once. — Karl Kraus

One's need for loneliness is not satisfied if one sits at a table alone. There must be empty chairs as well. — Karl Kraus

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

I am already so popular that anyone who vilifies me becomes more popular than I am. — Karl Kraus

Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children? — Karl Kraus

Prussia: freedom of movement with a muzzle. Austria: an isolation cell in which screaming is allowed. — Karl Kraus

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

He who does without the praise of the crowd will not deny himself an opportunity to be his own adherent. — Karl Kraus

A man's eroticism is a woman's sexuality. — Karl Kraus

Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram. — Karl Kraus

No ideas and the ability to express them - that's a journalist. — Karl Kraus

The heroes of obtrusiveness, people with whom no soldier would lie down in the trenches, though he has to submit to being interviewed by them, break into recently abandoned royal castles so that they can report, "We got there first!" It would be far less shameful to be paid for committing atrocities than for fabricating them. — Karl Kraus

Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought. — Karl Kraus

Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics. — Karl Kraus

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

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. — Karl Kraus

If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies. — Karl Kraus

To write a novel may be pure pleasure. To live a novel presents certain difficulties. As for reading a novel, I do my best to get out of it. — Karl Kraus

The mission of the press is to spread culture while destroying the attention span. — Karl Kraus

Most critics write critiques which are by the authors they write critiques about. That would not be so bad, but then most authorswrite works which are by the critics who write critiques about them. — Karl Kraus

A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards. — Karl Kraus

It is a mystery to me how a theologian can be praised for having brought himself to disbelieve dogmas. I've always thought that those who have brought themselves to believe in dogmas merit the true recognition owing a heroic deed. — Karl Kraus

Satire chooses and knows no objects. It arises by fleeing from them and their forcing themselves upon it. — Karl Kraus

I saw a poet chase a butterfly in a meadow. He put his net on a bench where a boy sat reading a book. It's a misfortune that it is usually the other way round. — Karl Kraus

I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up. — Karl Kraus

Progress celebrates victories over nature. Progress makes purses out of human skin. When people were traveling in mail coaches, the world got ahead better than it does now that salesmen fly through the air. What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way? How will the heirs of this age be taught the most basic motions that are necessary to activate the most complicated machines? Nature can rely on progress; it will avenge it for the outrage it has perpetrated on it. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

I have decided many a stylistic problem first by my head, then by heads or tails. — Karl Kraus

I don't like to meddle in my private affairs. — Karl Kraus

Life is an effort that deserves a better cause. — Karl Kraus

It is not true that one cannot live without a woman. It is simply that one cannot have lived without one. — Karl Kraus

Psychoanalysts are father confessors who like to listen to the sins of the father as well. — Karl Kraus

My respect for the inconsiderable is assuming gigantic dimensions. — Karl Kraus

I have drawn from the well of language many a thought which I do not have and which I could not put into words. — Karl Kraus

Nothing is more horrible than my self in the mirror of hysteria. Nothing is more vulgar than my style in the hands of another. Toimitate me is to punish me. — Karl Kraus

It is either a half-truth or a truth and a half. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

In the theater one must sit in such a way that one sees the audience as a dark mass. Then it cannot bother one more than it does an actor. Nothing is more disturbing than being able to distinguish individuals in the crowd. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

The blind won't admit that I have eyes in my head, and the deaf say that I'm dumb. — Karl Kraus

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.' — Karl Kraus