Quotes By Karl Kraus

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.

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

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

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

Jealousy is a dog's bark which attracts thieves.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.'

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

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

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

A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.

Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.

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

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

Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.

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

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

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

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

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

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

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.

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