Top 75 Quotes & Sayings by Elias Canetti
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Swiss author Elias Canetti.
Last updated on November 5, 2024.
As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.
The planet's survival has become so uncertain that any effort, any thought that presupposes an assured future amounts to a mad gamble.
Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.
There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.
The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.
Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous.
His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations.
Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true.
One should use praise to recognize what one is not.
There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.
Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.
The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.
There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.
Words are not too old, only people are too old if they use the same words too frequently.
A 'modern' man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.
Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk upright and with open eyes into their misfortune?
When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.
The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.
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.
Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.
Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf.
People's fates are simplified by their names.
All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.
Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.
Most religions do not make men better, only warier.
It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.
Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.
One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.
He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.
People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.
Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.
The fear of burglars is not only the fear of being robbed, but also the fear of a sudden and unexpected clutch out of the darkness.
The self- explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. He learns to see himself, but suddenly, provided he was honest, all the rest appears, and it is as rich as he was, and, as a final crowning, richer.
The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else.
Explain nothing. Put it there. Say it. Leave.
In eternity everything is just beginning.
History portrays everything as if it could not have come otherwise. History is on the side of what happened.
One has a prejudice wherever one fears a transformation.
In five minutes the earth would be a desert, and you cling to books.
I would like to become tolerant without overlooking anything, persecute no one even when all people persecute me; become better without noticing it; become sadder, but enjoy living; become more serene, be happy in others; belong to no one, grow in everyone; love the best, comfort the worst; not even hate myself anymore.
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
When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about
Learning is the art of ignoring.
Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster.
I cannot become modest; too many things burn in me; the old solutions are falling apart; nothing has been done yet with the new ones. So I begin, everywhere at once, as if I had a century ahead of me.
There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight
There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown.
The first effect of adjusting to other people is that one becomes boring.
The act of naming is the great and solemn consolation of mankind
Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.
It is always the enemy who started it, even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it.
Speak as though it were the last sentence allowed you.
Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing. The oldest law is that which regulates it, and this is still themost important law today and, as such, has remained the basic concern of all movements which have at heart the community of human activities and of human existence in general.
Beauty always has something remote.
A person often falls very ill in order to become someone else and then returns to health much disappointed.
Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true
Of all the words in all languages I know, the greatest concentration is in the English word I.
...how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?
Slumbering in every human being lies an infinity of possibilities, which one must not arouse in vain. For it is terrible when the whole man resonates with echoes and echoes, none becoming a real voice.
It is important to say all the great thoughts again, without knowing that they have already been said.
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