Famous Karl Kraus Quotations

First 1 Last 
"Adults who still derive childlike pleasure from hanging gifts of a ready-made education on the Christmas tree of a child waiting outside the door to life do not realize how unreceptive they are making the children to everything that constitutes the true surprise of life."
by Karl Kraus
"The immorality of men triumphs over the amorality of women."
by Karl Kraus
"Life is an effort that deserves a better cause."
by Karl Kraus
"Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust."
by Karl Kraus
"A weak man has doubts before a decision, a strong man has them afterwards."
by Karl Kraus
"Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples; in others, sex laws."
by Karl Kraus
"Education is what most receive, many pass on, and few possess."
by Karl Kraus
"He who does without the praise of the crowd will not deny himself an opportunity to be his own adherent."
by Karl Kraus
"How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read."
by Karl Kraus
"Psychoanalysts are father confessors who like to listen to the sins of the father as well."
by Karl Kraus
"Psychoanalysis is that mental illnes for which it regards itself a therapy."
by Karl Kraus
"Sexual enlightenment is justified insofar as girls cannot learn too soon how children do not come into the world."
by Karl Kraus
"Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid."
by Karl Kraus
"The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them."
by Karl Kraus
"The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable."
by Karl Kraus
"What torture, this life in society! Often someone is obliging enough to offer me a light, and in order to oblige him I have to fish a cigarette out of my pocket."
by Karl Kraus
"Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?"
by Karl Kraus
"It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new."
by Karl Kraus
"Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves."
by Karl Kraus
"Nationalism is the love which ties me to the blockheads of my country, to the insultors of my way of life, and to the desecrators of my language."
by Karl Kraus
"When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest."
by Karl Kraus
"Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world."
by Karl Kraus
"Sex education is legitimate in that girls cannot be taught soon enough how children don"
by Karl Kraus
"He who sleeps half a day has won half a life."
by Karl Kraus
"A comprehensive education is a well-stocked pharmacy: but we have no assurance that potassium cyanide will not be administered for a head cold..."
by Karl Kraus
"A school without grades must have been concocted by someone who was drunk on non-alcoholic wine."
by Karl Kraus
"A philistine is habitually bored and looks for things that won't bore him. An artist finds things boring, but is never bored."
by Karl Kraus
"Adults who still derive childlike pleasure from hanging gifts of a ready-made education on the Christmas tree of a child waiting outside the d..."
by Karl Kraus
"Artists have a right to be modest and a duty to be vain."
by Karl Kraus
"Education is what most people receive, many pass on, and few have."
by Karl Kraus
"I can say with pride that I have spent days and nights not reading anything, and that with unflagging energy I use every moment to acquire gra..."
by Karl Kraus
"I knew a man who carried his education in his vest pocket because there was more room there than in his head."
by Karl Kraus
"If by day art is in the service of business, the evenings are devoted to the businessman's enjoyment of it. That is asking a lot of art, but a..."
by Karl Kraus
"Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace."
by Karl Kraus
"Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom."
by Karl Kraus
"Only he is an artist who can make a riddle out of a solution."
by Karl Kraus
"Since the law prohibits the keeping of wild animals and I get no enjoyment from pets, I prefer to remain unmarried."
by Karl Kraus
"Two people did not get married. Since then they have been living in mutual widowhood."
by Karl Kraus
"What the teachers digest, the pupils eat."
by Karl Kraus
"What do people have against convicts? Is living together in the pen of freedom, where young people engage in mutual psychology, any more beaut..."
by Karl Kraus
"You don't even live once."
by Karl Kraus
"Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots."
by Karl Kraus


Hire a Writer