Elias Canetti Quotes

Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.

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.

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.

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?

Explain nothing. Put it there. Say it. Leave.

Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.

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.

In eternity everything is just beginning.

The first effect of adjusting to other people is that one becomes boring.

Learning is the art of ignoring.

His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations.

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.

When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown.

Speak as though it were the last sentence allowed you.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

It is important to say all the great thoughts again, without knowing that they have already been said.

In five minutes the earth would be a desert, and you cling to books.

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.

Of all the words in all languages I know, the greatest concentration is in the English word I.

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

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

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

Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster.