Top 265 Quotes & Sayings by Karl Kraus - Page 2

War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.

Life is an effort that deserves a better cause.

One's need for loneliness is not satisfied if one sits at a table alone. There must be empty chairs as well.

Diplomacy is a game of chess in which the nations are checkmated.

An illusion of depth often occurs if a blockhead is a muddlehead at the same time

So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes--with the exception of their occupation.

Intercourse with a woman is sometimes a satisfactory substitute for masturbation. But it takes a lot of imagination to make it work.

To be sure, the dog is loyal. But why, on that account, should we take him as an example? He is loyal to man, not to other dogs.

It is not true that one cannot live without a woman. It is simply that one cannot have lived without one.

Barbershop conversations are irrefutable proof that heads exist for the sake of hair.

How do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists, then believe what they read.

We are sacrificing ourselves for our ready-made goods; we are consumers and live in such a way that the means may consume the end.

Psychoanalysis is the mental illness it purports to cure

When I want to go to sleep, I must first get a whole menagerie of voices to shut up. You wouldn't believe what a racket they make in my room.

Moral responsibility is what is lacking in a man when he demands it of a woman.

The extraordinary ability of a woman to forget is not the same as the talent of a lady not to be able to remember.

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

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.

Lord, forgive them, for they know what they do!

The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have no other use for language than to make themselves understood.

It is regarded as normal to consecrate virginity in general and to lust for its destruction in particular.

A poem is good until one knows by whom it is.

A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards.

I master only the language of others. Mine does with me what it wants.

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

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

The world has become uglier since it began to look into a mirror every day; so let us settle for the mirror image and do without an inspection of the original.

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

Stupidity gets up early; that is why events are accustomed to happening in the morning.

Since the law prohibits the keeping of wild animals and I get no enjoyment from pets, I prefer to remain unmarried.

Cosmetics is the science of a woman's cosmos.

When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest.

Many women would like to dream with men without sleeping with them. Someone should point out to them that this is utterly impossible.

You don't even live once.

Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples; in others, sex laws.

The blind won't admit that I have eyes in my head, and the deaf say that I'm dumb.

A healthy man is content with a woman. An erotic man is content with a stocking to get to a woman. A sick man is content with thestocking.

The heroes of obtrusiveness, people with whom no soldier would lie down in the trenches, though he has to submit to being interviewed by them, break into recently abandoned royal castles so that they can report, "We got there first!" It would be far less shameful to be paid for committing atrocities than for fabricating them.

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

Most people are sick. But only a few know that this is something they can be proud of. These are the psychoanalysts.

Most people only do what they are asked to do; success comes to those who do a little more.

Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients.

Language is the only chimera whose illusory power is endless, the inexhaustibility which keeps life from being impoverished. Let men learn to serve language.

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.

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.

Nationalism is the love which ties me to the blockheads of my country, to the insultors of my way of life, and to the desecrators of my language.

Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.

Art is something that is so perfectly clear that no one comprehends it.

A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation.

I knew a man who carried his education in his vest pocket because there was more room there than in his head.

There are writers who can express in as little as twenty pages what I occasionally need as many as two for.

One of the most widespread diseases is diagnosis.

Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?

I trim my opponents to fit my arrows.

One must read all writers twice--the good as well as the bad. The one kind will be recognized; the other, unmasked.

It is uplifting to lose one?s faith in a reality which looks the way it is described in a newspaper.

Immortality is the only thing which doesn't tolerate being postponed.

If by day art is in the service of business, the evenings are devoted to the businessman's enjoyment of it. That is asking a lot of art, but art and the businessman make it work.

Technology is a servant who makes so much noise cleaning up in the next room that his master cannot make music.

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