Quotes By Karl Kraus

Virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower.

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

Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.

Journalist: a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time he has, the worse he writes.

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

Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.

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

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.

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

Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.

Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.