“How do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists, then believe what they read.”
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Famous Karl Kraus Quotes
“Ideas are transplanted by splitting, thoughts by sprouting.”
“To have no ideas and being able to express them is the essence of journalism.”
“Jealousy is a dog's bark which attracts thieves.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“You'd be surprised how hard it can often be to translate an action into an idea.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.”
“Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.”
“Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“I don't like to meddle in my private affairs.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“Virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower.”
Source: Dicta and Contradicta
“Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.”
Source: No Compromise: Selected Writings of Karl Kraus
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.”
Source: Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry
“A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.”
“A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.”
“No ideas and the ability to express them - that's a journalist.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.”
Source: Dicta and Contradicta
“Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?”
Source: Dicta and Contradicta
“Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“A fine world in which man reproaches woman with fulfilling his heart's desire!”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions.”
Source: No Compromise: Selected Writings of Karl Kraus
“Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram.”
“I and life: The case was settled chivalrously. The opponents parted without having made up.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write.”
“Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“The mission of the press is to spread culture while destroying the attention span.”
Source: Dicta and Contradicta
“The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.”
“Life is an effort that deserves a better cause.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
Source: Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry
“The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.”