Karl Kraus Quotes about Literature

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients.

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

A bibliophile has approximately the same relationship to literature as a philatelist to geography.

Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.

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

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

Psychoanalysis is the mental illness it purports to cure

Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.

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

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

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

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

Virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower.

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

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