Karl Kraus Quotes

Children today laugh at fathers who tell them about dragons. It is necessary to make fear a required subject; otherwise children will never learn it.

When I take up my pen, nothing can happen to me. Fate, remember that.

A school without grades must have been concocted by someone who was drunk on non-alcoholic wine.

A historian is not always a prophet facing backwards, but a journalist is always someone who afterwards knew everything beforehand.

When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting.

A father's pride, laid on thick, has always made me wish that the fellow had at least experienced some pain during procreation.

Mankind became hysterical in the Middle Ages because it poorly repressed the sexual impressions of its Greek boyhood.

I like to hold a monologue with women. But a dialogue with myself is more stimulating.

Imagination has the right to feast in the shade of the tree that it turns into a forest.

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

Ingratitude is often disproportionate to the benefaction received.

To be perfect, one lacks only a defect.

Ideas are transplanted by splitting, thoughts by sprouting.

Nowadays the thief cannot be distinguished from his victim. Neither has any valuable objects on him.

A poem is good until one knows by whom it is.

The blind won't admit that I have eyes in my head, and the deaf say that I'm dumb.

Love thy neighbor as thyself. Because each of us is his own neighbor.

I have to do this, as long as it is at all possible; for if those who are obliged to look after commas had always made sure they were in the right place, then Shanghai would not be burning.

Let language be the divining rod that finds the sources of thought.

Most critics write critiques which are by the authors they write critiques about. That would not be so bad, but then most authorswrite works which are by the critics who write critiques about them.

To be human is erroneous.

A plagiarist should be made to copy the author a hundred times.

A great deal of learning can be packed into an empty head.

If you wish to form a clear judgment on your friends, consult your dreams.

In a well-run mental household there ought to be a thorough cleaning at the threshold of consciousness a few times a year.

In case of doubt, decide in favor of what is correct.

In a hollow head there is much room for knowledge.

The agitator seizes the word. The artist is seized by it.

Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored.

Satire chooses and knows no objects. It arises by fleeing from them and their forcing themselves upon it.

Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace.

A pun, though despicable in itself, can be the noblest vehicle of an artistic intention by serving as the abbreviation of a wittyview. It can be a social criticism in the form of an epigram.

In case of doubt decide in favor of what is correct.

He who gladly does without the praise of the crowd will not miss the opportunity of becoming his own fan.