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You can tirelessly keep on reading the same author, revere, admire, praise him, exalt him to the skies, know and recite each of his sentences by heart, and yet remain completely unaffected by him, as if he had never demanded anything of you and not said anything at all.
Elias Canetti
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When I leaf through Fackel issues of my slave years, I am seized by horror. Anyone released from bondage must feel like this.
Elias Canetti
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Everything you rejected and pushed aside—take it up again.
Elias Canetti
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Is there still a possibility of public truth?
The prime condition for that would be that you pose your own questions, not just answer them. The questions of others have a distorting influence, one adapts to them, accepts words and concepts that should be avoided at all costs.
Ideally, you should use only words which you have filled with new meaning.
Elias Canetti
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You draw closer to truth by shutting yourself off from mankind.
Elias Canetti
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The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure.
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Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.
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Some sentences release their poison only after years.
Elias Canetti
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The once-seen does not exist yet. The always seen no longer exists.
Elias Canetti
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All the pessimists in world history together are nothing against reality.
Elias Canetti
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His great holy books, which he does not know. They are so holy that he does not dare to open them.
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Whenever the truth threatens, he hides behind a thought.
Elias Canetti
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You keep taking note of whatever confirms your ideas—better to write down what refutes and weakens them!
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You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic.
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There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.
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You don't have to know a philosopher's every syllable to know why he rubs you the wrong way. You may know it best after a few of his sentences, and les and less well after that. The important thing is to see his web and move away before you tear it.
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One should tell oneself how fruitful misunderstandings are. One shouldn't despise them. One of the wisest people was a collector of misunderstandings.
Elias Canetti
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A mind, lean in its own language. In others, it gets fat.
Elias Canetti
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One needs time to free oneself of wrong convictions. If it happens too suddenly, they go on festering.
Elias Canetti
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Nothing was better for you than humiliation, for there was nothing you felt more deeply.
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Everything one has forgotten cries for help in the dream.
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It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite… The reversal of fear of being touched belongs to the nature of crowds. The feeling of relief is most striking where the density of the crowd is greatest
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He sometimes tells himself that there is nothing more to be said, simply because he won't get around to saying it.—How contemptible!
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I repulse death with all my strength. If I accepted it, I would be a murderer.
Elias Canetti
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Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
Elias Canetti
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Born:
July 25, 1905
Died:
August 14, 1994
(aged 89)
Bio:
Elias Canetti was a German language author, born in Bulgaria, and later a British citizen. He was a modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer.
Known for:
Crowds and Power (1983)
Auto-da-Fé (1935)
The Tongue Set Free (1979)
Party in the Blitz
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