Karl Kraus Quotes

Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.

A man's eroticism is a woman's sexuality.

Education is what most receive, many pass on, and few possess.

Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life.

A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation.

A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.

Intercourse with a woman is sometimes a satisfactory substitute for masturbation. But it takes a lot of imagination to make it work.

Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?

Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.

Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.

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.

Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions.

Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.

A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.

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

Love between sexes is a sin in theology, a forbidden intercourse in jurisprudence, a mechanical insult in medicine, and a subject philosophy has no time for.

Psychoanalysis is the mental illness it purports to cure.

The ultimate aim of psychoanalysis is to attribute art to mental weakness, and then to trace the weakness back to the point where, according to analytic dogma, it originated -- namely, the lavatory.

Progress celebrates victories over nature. Progress makes purses out of human skin. When people were traveling in mail coaches, the world got ahead better than it does now that salesmen fly through the air. What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way? How will the heirs of this age be taught the most basic motions that are necessary to activate the most complicated machines? Nature can rely on progress; it will avenge it for the outrage it has perpetrated on it.

How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.

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.'.

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

War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.