Quotes by Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus

Austrian writer and journalist

Lived from: 1874 - 1936

Category: Writers (Contemporary) | Poets (Contemporary) Country: FlagAustria

Born: 28 april 1874 Died: 12 june 1936

  • How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
  • 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.
  • The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life.
  • Progress, under whose feet the grass mourns and the forest turns into paper from which newspaper plants grow, has subordinated the purpose of life to the means of subsistence and turned us into the nuts and bolts for our tools.
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Quotes 1 till 20 of 42.

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  • A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.
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  • A man's eroticism is a woman's sexuality.
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  • A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.
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  • Adults who still derive childlike pleasure from hanging gifts of a ready-made education on the Christmas tree of a child waiting outside the door to life do not realize how unreceptive they are making the children to everything that constitutes the true surprise of life.
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  • An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.
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  • Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • 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.
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life.
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • He who sleeps half a day has won half a life.
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • Intercourse with a woman is sometimes a satisfactory substitute for masturbation. But it takes a lot of imagination to make it work.
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • 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.
    ― Karl Kraus
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  • Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.
    ― Karl Kraus
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