Elias Canetti Quotes

60 Sourced Quotes

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.

Elias Canetti
Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.

Elias Canetti
Some sentences release their poison only after years.

Elias Canetti
The once-seen does not exist yet. The always seen no longer exists.

Elias Canetti
All the pessimists in world history together are nothing against reality.

Elias Canetti
His great holy books, which he does not know. They are so holy that he does not dare to open them.

Elias Canetti
Whenever the truth threatens, he hides behind a thought.

Elias Canetti
You keep taking note of whatever confirms your ideas—better to write down what refutes and weakens them!

Elias Canetti
You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic.

Elias Canetti
There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.

Elias Canetti
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.

Elias Canetti
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
A mind, lean in its own language. In others, it gets fat.

Elias Canetti
One needs time to free oneself of wrong convictions. If it happens too suddenly, they go on festering.

Elias Canetti
Nothing was better for you than humiliation, for there was nothing you felt more deeply.

Elias Canetti
Everything one has forgotten cries for help in the dream.

Elias Canetti
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

Elias Canetti
He sometimes tells himself that there is nothing more to be said, simply because he won't get around to saying it.—How contemptible!

Elias Canetti
I repulse death with all my strength. If I accepted it, I would be a murderer.

Elias Canetti
Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.

Elias Canetti
I was never drawn to experiment with language; I take note of such experiments, but avoid them in my own writing. The reason is that the substance of life claims me completely. To indulge in linguistic experiments is to ignore the greater part of this substance, leaving all but a tiny portion untouched and unused, as if a musician were to ceaselessly play an instrument with his little finger only.

Elias Canetti
The story of your youth must not turn into a catalog of what became important in your later life. It must also contain the dissipation, the failure, and the waste.

Elias Canetti
The unity of a nation consists mainly in its being able to act, when necessary, like a single paranoiac.

Elias Canetti
Travelling, one accepts everything; indignation stays at home. One looks, one listens, one is roused to enthusiasm by the most dreadful things because they are new. Good travellers are heartless.

Elias Canetti
Life experience does not amount to very much and could be learned from novels alone, e. g., from Balzac, without any help from life.

Elias Canetti
Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.

Elias Canetti
One who, alone, would be unconquerable. But he weakens himself with allegiances.

Elias Canetti
It amazes me how a person to whom literature means anything can take it up as an object of study.

Elias Canetti
Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.

Elias Canetti
He is a lesser figure than X —how it pleases an Englishman to say that! Never suspecting what basement that would put him in, a wood louse.

Elias Canetti