Quotes By Karl Kraus

Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former.

Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.

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.

Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.

An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.

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

Virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower.

Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life.

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

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

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

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

A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.

Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions.

A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.

Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.

Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.

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

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

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

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

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

You would be surprised how hard it often is to translate an action into thought.

Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.

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

Squeeze human nature into the straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear.

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

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Jealousy is a dog's bark which attracts thieves.