Top 265 Quotes & Sayings by Karl Kraus

Sex education is legitimate in that girls cannot be taught soon enough how children don't come into the world.

A fine world in which man reproaches woman with fulfilling his heart's desire!

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

It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.

Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.

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.

Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram.

An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.

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

Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write.

I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear.

Squeeze human nature into the straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear.

There are people who can never forgive a beggar for their not having given him anything.

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

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.

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

Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.

I and life: The case was settled chivalrously. The opponents parted without having made up.

There is no more unfortunate creature under the sun than a fetishist who yearns for a woman's shoe and has to settle for the whole woman.

The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.

To me all men are equal: there are jackasses everywhere, and I have the same contempt for them all.

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

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

The trouble with Germans is not that they fire shells, but that they engrave them with quotations from Kant.

Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.

Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.

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

Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life.

Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy.

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.'

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

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

Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.

You'd be surprised how hard it can often be to translate an action into an idea.

Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.

Jealousy is a dog's bark which attracts thieves.

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

My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.

Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former.

A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

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

A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.

Virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower.

Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.

Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.

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

Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions.

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

Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.

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

It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.

What the teachers digest, the pupils eat.

There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way.

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

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.

I have often been asked to be fair and view a matter from all sides. I did so, hoping that something might improve if I viewed allsides of it. But the result was the same. So I went back to viewing things only from one side, which saves me a lot of work and disappointment. For it is comforting to regard something as bad and to be able to use one's prejudice as an excuse.

The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.