Quotes by Karl Kraus
How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.
No ideas and the ability to express them - that's a journalist.
Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.
You'd be surprised how hard it can often be to translate an action into an idea.
Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.
Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.
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.
Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.
Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.
Jealousy is a dog's bark which attracts thieves.
An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.
If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.
Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.
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.
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.
Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.
I don't like to meddle in my private affairs.
Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.
He who does without the praise of the crowd will not deny himself an opportunity to be his own adherent.
Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.
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.
Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions.
