Karl Kraus Quotes

198 Sourced Quotes

A good writer does not receive anywhere near the number of poison-pen letters that is commonly assumed. Among a hundred jackassesthere are not ten who will admit to being jackasses, and at most one who will put it in writing.

Karl Kraus
Science is spectrum analysis. Art is photosynthesis.

Karl Kraus
Nowadays the thief cannot be distinguished from his victim. Neither has any valuable objects on him.

Karl Kraus
Ask your neighbor only about things you know better yourself. Then his advice could prove valuable.

Karl Kraus
A snob is unreliable. The work he praises might just be good.

Karl Kraus
One cleans someone else's threshold of consciousness only if one's own home is dirty.

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
Who is going to cast out an error to which he has given birth and replace it with an adopted truth?

Karl Kraus
What are all the orgies of Bacchus when compared to the intoxication of someone who completely surrenders to continence!

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
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
Humanity is the washerwoman of society that wrings out its dirty laundry in tears.

Karl Kraus
The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.

Karl Kraus
The unattractive thing about chauvinism is not so much the aversion to other nations as the love of one's own.

Karl Kraus
What is a historian? Someone who doesn't write well enough to work on a daily.

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

Karl Kraus
I can say with pride that I have spent days and nights not reading anything, and that with unflagging energy I use every moment toacquire gradually an encyclopedic lack of education.

Karl Kraus
Many talents preserve their precociousness right into old age.

Karl Kraus
A school without grades must have been concocted by someone who was drunk on non-alcoholic wine.

Karl Kraus
Penalties serve to deter those who are not inclined to commit any crimes.

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
A philistine is habitually bored and looks for things that won't bore him. An artist finds things boring, but is never bored.

Karl Kraus
Ingratitude is often disproportionate to the benefaction received.

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
If something is stolen from you, don't go to the police. They're not interested. Don't go to a psychologist either, because he's interested in only one thing: that it was really you who did the stealing.

Karl Kraus
When I take up my pen, nothing can happen to me. Fate, remember that.

Karl Kraus
There is a shortage of clerks. Everyone is going into journalism.

Karl Kraus
The real end of the world is the destruction of the spirit; the other kind depends on the insignificant attempt to see whether after such a destruction the world can go on.

Karl Kraus
What torture, this life in society! Often someone is obliging enough to offer me a light, and in order to oblige him I have to fish a cigarette out of my pocket.

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

Karl Kraus