Karl Kraus

The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back.

The superman is a premature ideal, one that presupposes man.

Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.

Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.

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

A good stylist should have narcissistic enjoyment as he works. He must be able to objectivize his work to such an extent that he catches himself feeling envious and has to jog his memory to find that he is himself the creator. In short, he must display that highest degree of objectivity which the world calls vanity.

Virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower.

Barbershop conversations are irrefutable proof that heads exist for the sake of hair.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

How unreliable is the woman caught being faithful Today she is faithful to you tomorrow to another.

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.

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

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

Morality is a burglar's tool whose merit lies in never being left behind at the scene of the crime.

I am already so popular that anyone who vilifies me becomes more popular than I am.

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

Cosmetics is the science of a womans cosmos.

A journalist is stimulated by a deadline. He writes worse when he has time.

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

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

Squeeze human nature into the straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear.

No ideas and the ability to express them - that's a journalist.

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.

It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.

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

I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear.

Immortality is the only thing which doesn't tolerate being postponed.

Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.

Sex education is legitimate in that girls cannot be taught soon enough how children don't come into the world.

Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.

Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write.

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

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.'

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

A white lie is always pardonable. But he who tells the truth without compulsion merits no leniency.

I don't like to meddle in my private affairs.

Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.

Justice is a whore that won't let herself be stiffed, and collects the wages of shame even from the poor.

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

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

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.

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

Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.

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

Hate must make a man productive. Otherwise one might as well love.

Truth is a clumsy servant that breaks the dishes while washing them.

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

Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.

The trouble with Germans is not that they fire shells, but that they engrave them with quotations from Kant.

The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.

You'd be surprised how hard it can often be to translate an action into an idea.

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

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

Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.

Diplomacy is a game of chess in which the nations are checkmated.

To me all men are equal: there are jackasses everywhere, and I have the same contempt for them all.

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

To be perfect, one lacks only a defect.

The difference between psychiatrists and other mentally disturbed people is something like the relationship between concave and convex madness.

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

You would be surprised how hard it often is to translate an action into thought.

The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.

My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.

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

Jealousy is a dog's bark which attracts thieves.

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

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

On the stage one must not confuse the nature of a personality with the naturalness of a person.

It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.

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

There are people who can never forgive a beggar for their not having given him anything.

Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.

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

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.

He who sleeps half a day has won half a life.

Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.

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

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

In Berlin things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna they are hopeless but not serious.

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