Karl Kraus Quotes - Page 5

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

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.

Truth is a clumsy servant that breaks the dishes while washing them.

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

A great deal of learning can be packed into an empty head.

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

The superman is a premature ideal, one that presupposes man.

To be human is erroneous.

Love thy neighbor as thyself. Because each of us is his own neighbor.

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

Talent is often a defect in character.

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

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

Insights into erotic life belong to art, not education. But sometimes these have to be spelled out for the illiterates. And it ismainly a matter of convincing the illiterates, for they are the ones who write the penal code.

A comprehensive education is a well-stocked pharmacy: but we have no assurance that potassium cyanide will not be administered fora head cold.

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.

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

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.

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

A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.

Sorrento, August. For two weeks now I haven't heard a German word or understood an Italian one. This way one can manage to live with people; everything goes like clockwork and no irksome misunderstanding can arise.

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.

When I don't make any progress, it is because I have bumped into the wall of language. Then I draw back with a bloody head. And would like to go on.

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

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