Quotes By Karl Kraus

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.

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

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.

I and life: The case was settled chivalrously. The opponents parted without having made up.

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

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.

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.

Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy.

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.

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

He who does without the praise of the crowd will not deny himself an opportunity to be his own adherent.

I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.

If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.

When a man is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, I'm human.' When he behaves like a beast, he says 'After all, I'm only human.'

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.

Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.

A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.

Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram.

The mission of the press is to spread culture while destroying the attention span.