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In Case Of Doubt, Decide In Favor Of What Is Correct.

-Karl Kraus

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In Case Of Doubt,

Karl Kraus

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In Case Of Doubt, Decide In Favor Of What Is Correct.

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Do Not Learn More Than You Absolutely Need To Get Through Life.

Feminine Passion Is To Masculine As An Epic Is To An Epigram.

Masculine And Feminine

When I Read, It Is Not Acted Literature; But What I Write Is Written Acting.

Someone Who Can Write Aphorisms Should Not Fritter Away His Time In Essays.

Contemporaries Live From Second Hand To Mouth.

To Me All Men Are Equal: There Are Jackasses Everywhere, And I Have The Same Contempt For Them All.

I Have To Do This, As Long As It Is At All Possible; For If Those Who Are Obliged To Look After Commas Had Always Made Sure They Were In The Right Place, Then Shanghai Would Not Be Burning.

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.

Language Is The Mother Of Thought, Not Its Handmaiden.

When I Want To Go To Sleep, I Must First Get A Whole Menagerie Of Voices To Shut Up. You Wouldn't Believe What A Racket They Make In My Room.

A Historian Is Not Always A Prophet Facing Backwards, But A Journalist Is Always Someone Who Afterwards Knew Everything Beforehand.

I Can Say With Pride That I Have Spent Days And Nights Not Reading Anything, And That With Unflagging Energy I Use Every Moment Toacquire Gradually An Encyclopedic Lack Of Education.

Immortality Is The Only Thing Which Doesn't Tolerate Being Postponed.

What Are All The Orgies Of Bacchus When Compared To The Intoxication Of Someone Who Completely Surrenders To Continence!

Lord, Forgive Them, For They Know What They Do!

When I Don't Make Any Progress, It Is Because I Have Bumped Into The Wall Of Language. Then I Draw Back With A Bloody Head. And Would Like To Go On.

How Unreliable Is The Woman Caught Being Faithful! Today She Is Faithful To You, Tomorrow To Another.

Ideas Are Transplanted By Splitting, Thoughts By Sprouting.

Technology Is A Servant Who Makes So Much Noise Cleaning Up In The Next Room That His Master Cannot Make Music.

A Journalist Is Stimulated By A Deadline. He Writes Worse When He Has Time

When I Take Up My Pen, Nothing Can Happen To Me. Fate, Remember That.

It Is Not True That One Cannot Live Without A Woman. It Is Simply That One Cannot Have Lived Without One.

No Ideas And The Ability To Express Them - That's A Journalist.

Humanity Is The Washerwoman Of Society That Wrings Out Its Dirty Laundry In Tears.

Intercourse With A Woman Is Sometimes A Satisfactory Substitute For Masturbation. But It Takes A Lot Of Imagination To Make It Work.

The Discovery Of The North Pole Is One Of Those Realities Which Could Not Be Avoided. It Is The Wages Which Human Perseverance Pays Itself When It Thinks That Something Is Taking Too Long. The World Needed A Discoverer Of The North Pole, And In All Areas Of Social Activity, Merit Was Less Important Here Than Opportunity.

Solitude Would Be Ideal If You Could Pick The People To Avoid.

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.

Psychoanalysis Is The Mental Illness It Purports To Cure

Education Is A Crutch With Which The Foolish Attack The Wise To Prove That They Are Not Idiots.

Family Life Is An Encroachment On Private Life.

Insights Into Erotic Life Belong To Art, Not Education. But Sometimes These Have To Be Spelled Out For The Illiterates. And It Ismainly A Matter Of Convincing The Illiterates, For They Are The Ones Who Write The Penal Code.

A Writer Is Someone Who Can Make A Riddle Out Of An Answer.

When A Culture Feels That Its End Has Come, It Sends For A Priest.

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.

Barbershop Conversations Are Irrefutable Proof That Heads Exist For The Sake Of Hair.

A Woman Who Cannot Be Ugly Is Not Beautiful.

You Don't Even Live Once.

The Truth Is That The Newspaper Is Not A Place For Information To Be Given, Rather It Is Just Hollow Content, Or More Than That, A Provoker Of Content. If It Prints Lies About Atrocities, Real Atrocities Are The Result.

One Must Read All Writers Twice--the Good As Well As The Bad. The One Kind Will Be Recognized; The Other, Unmasked.

You'd Be Surprised How Hard It Can Often Be To Translate An Action Into An Idea.

Social Reform Is The Desperate Decision To Remove Corns From A Person Suffering From Cancer.

Newspapers Have Roughly The Same Relationship To Life As Fortune-tellers To Metaphysics.

The Real End Of The World Is The Destruction Of The Spirit; The Other Kind Depends On The Insignificant Attempt To See Whether After Such A Destruction The World Can Go On.

Why Didn't Eternity Have This Deformed Age Aborted ? Its Birthmark Is The Stamp Of A Newspaper, Its Medium Is Printer's Ink, And In Its Veins Flows Ink.

A Child Learns To Discard His Ideals, Whereas A Grown-up Never Wears Out His Short Pants.

It Is Better Not To Express What One Means Than To Express What One Does Not Mean.

If Children Had Been Told That They Could Not Blow Their Noses, This Alone Would Make Adults Blush.

Life Is An Effort That Deserves A Better Cause.

Chastity Always Takes Its Toll. In Some It Produces Pimples; In Others, Sex Laws.

Stupidity Is An Elemental Force For Which No Earthquake Is A Match.

What The Teachers Digest, The Pupils Eat.

To Write A Novel May Be Pure Pleasure. To Live A Novel Presents Certain Difficulties. As For Reading A Novel, I Do My Best To Get Out Of It.

A Father's Pride, Laid On Thick, Has Always Made Me Wish That The Fellow Had At Least Experienced Some Pain During Procreation.

It Is Uplifting To Lose One?s Faith In A Reality Which Looks The Way It Is Described In A Newspaper.

I Don't Like To Meddle In My Private Affairs.

Where Do I Find The Time For Not Reading So Many Books?

Who Is Going To Cast Out An Error To Which He Has Given Birth And Replace It With An Adopted Truth?

News Reports Stand Up As People, And People Wither Into Editorials. Clichés Walk Around On Two Legs While Men Are Having Theirs Shot Off.

Stupidity Gets Up Early; That Is Why Events Are Accustomed To Happening In The Morning.

If The Reporter Has Killed Our Imagination With His Truth, He Threatens Our Life With His Lies.

I Saw A Poet Chase A Butterfly In A Meadow. He Put His Net On A Bench Where A Boy Sat Reading A Book. It's A Misfortune That It Is Usually The Other Way Round.

Most People Are Sick. But Only A Few Know That This Is Something They Can Be Proud Of. These Are The Psychoanalysts.

Many Women Would Like To Dream With Men Without Sleeping With Them. Someone Should Point Out To Them That This Is Utterly Impossible.

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.

My Request That My Writing Be Read Twice Has Aroused Great Indignation. Unjustly So. After All, I Do Not Ask That They Be Read Once.

That An Author Takes A Bow Is Not Humility But Presumption. What Does The Paleface Want On The Stage Afterwards? But Before The Performance He Had Even Less Business There--and Paying Him Royalties Is Equivalent To Cheating The Actors.

I Like To Hold A Monologue With Women. But A Dialogue With Myself Is More Stimulating.

The Press, That Goiter Of The World, Swells Up With The Desire For Conquest And Bursts With The Achievements Which Every Day Brings. A Week Has Room For The Boldest Climax Of The Human Drive For Expansion.

Jealousy Is A Dog's Bark Which Attracts Thieves.

One Can Translate An Editorial But Not A Poem. For One Can Go Across The Border Naked But Not Without One's Skin; For, Unlike Clothes, One Cannot Get A New Skin.

Culture Is The Tacit Agreement To Let The Means Of Subsistence Disappear Behind The Purpose Of Existence.

Sentimental Irony Is A Dog That Bays At The Moon While Pissing On Graves.

Experiences Are Savings Which A Miser Puts Aside. Wisdom Is An Inheritance Which A Wastrel Cannot Exhaust.

Prussia: Freedom Of Movement With A Muzzle. Austria: An Isolation Cell In Which Screaming Is Allowed.

The Devil Is An Optimist If He Thinks He Can Make People Worse Than They Are.

Today's Literature: Prescriptions Written By Patients.

If You Wish To Form A Clear Judgment On Your Friends, Consult Your Dreams.

Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself. Because Each Of Us Is His Own Neighbor.

Love Thy Neighbor

Sexuality Poorly Repressed Unsettles Some Families; Well Repressed, It Unsettles The Whole World.

Ingratitude Is Often Disproportionate To The Benefaction Received.

Psychology Is A Bus That Accompanies An Airplane.

We Are Sacrificing Ourselves For Our Ready-made Goods; We Are Consumers And Live In Such A Way That The Means May Consume The End.

War: First, One Hopes To Win; Then One Expects The Enemy To Lose; Then, One Is Satisfied That He Too Is Suffering; In The End, One Is Surprised That Everyone Has Lost.

The Little Stations Are Very Proud Because The Expresses Have To Pass Them By.

To Be Sure, The Dog Is Loyal. But Why, On That Account, Should We Take Him As An Example? He Is Loyal To Man, Not To Other Dogs.

Psychoanalysis Is That Mental Illness For Which It Regards Itself As Therapy.

Let Language Be The Divining Rod That Finds The Sources Of Thought.

The Immorality Of Men Triumphs Over The Amorality Of Women.

Keep Your Passions In Check, But Beware Of Giving Your Reason Free Rein.

To Be Human Is Erroneous.

Satire Chooses And Knows No Objects. It Arises By Fleeing From Them And Their Forcing Themselves Upon It.

My Language Is The Common Prostitute That I Turn Into A Virgin.

To Have No Ideas And Being Able To Express Them Is The Essence Of Journalism.

The Difference Between Psychiatrists And Other Mentally Disturbed People Is Something Like The Relationship Between Concave And Convex Madness.

Many Share My Views With Me. But I Don't Share Them With Them.

The Tyranny Of Necessity Grants Its Slaves Three Kinds Of Freedom: Opinion Free From Intellect, Entertainment Free From Art, And Orgies Free From Love.

Psychoanalysts Are Father Confessors Who Like To Listen To The Sins Of The Father As Well.

The Psychoanalysts Pick Our Dreams As If They Were Our Pockets.

The World Has Become Uglier Since It Began To Look Into A Mirror Every Day; So Let Us Settle For The Mirror Image And Do Without An Inspection Of The Original.

I Had A Terrible Vision: I Saw An Encyclopedia Walk Up To A Polymath And Open Him Up.

In Berlin, Things Are Serious But Not Hopeless. In Vienna, They Are Hopeless But Not Serious.

A Healthy Man Is Content With A Woman. An Erotic Man Is Content With A Stocking To Get To A Woman. A Sick Man Is Content With Thestocking.

Art Is Something That Is So Perfectly Clear That No One Comprehends It.

A Pun, Though Despicable In Itself, Can Be The Noblest Vehicle Of An Artistic Intention By Serving As The Abbreviation Of A Wittyview. It Can Be A Social Criticism In The Form Of An Epigram.

If Someone Calls Me Vain And Mean, I Know That He Trusts Me And Has Something To Confess To Me.

Christianity Has Enriched The Erotic Meal With The Appetizer Of Curiosity And Spoiled It With The Dessert Of Remorse.

Science Is Spectral Analysis. Art Is Light Synthesis.

A School Without Grades Must Have Been Concocted By Someone Who Was Drunk On Non-alcoholic Wine.

Sex Education Is Legitimate In That Girls Cannot Be Taught Soon Enough How Children Don't Come Into The World.

The Extraordinary Ability Of A Woman To Forget Is Not The Same As The Talent Of A Lady Not To Be Able To Remember.

There Is A Cultural Taste Which Tries Very Hard To Get Rid Of The Lice In A Fur Coat. There Is Another Which Tolerates The Lice And Thinks The Coat Can Be Worn With Them In It. And Finally There Is A Taste Which Regards The Lice As The Most Important Thing About The Coat And Consequently Places The Coat At The Lice's Disposal.

Many Talents Preserve Their Precociousness Right Into Old Age.

Most People Only Do What They Are Asked To Do; Success Comes To Those Who Do A Little More.

Anesthesia: Wounds Without Pain. Neurasthenia: Pain Without Wounds.

The Triumph Of Morality: A Thief Who Has Broken Into A Bedroom Claims His Sense Of Shame Had Been Outraged, And By Threatening Theoccupants With Exposure Of An Immoral Act He Blackmails Them Into Not Bringing Charges For Burglary.

Many Desire To Kill Me, And Many Wish To Spend An Hour Chatting With Me. The Law Protects Me From The Former.

There Are People Who Can Never Forgive A Beggar For Their Not Having Given Him Anything.

Diplomacy Is A Game Of Chess In Which The Nations Are Checkmated.

One Cleans Someone Else's Threshold Of Consciousness Only If One's Own Home Is Dirty.

Language Is The Only Chimera Whose Illusory Power Is Endless, The Inexhaustibility Which Keeps Life From Being Impoverished. Let Men Learn To Serve Language.

A Woman Occasionally Is Quite A Serviceable Substitute For Masturbation.

A Man's Eroticism Is A Woman's Sexuality.

The Secret Of The Demagogue Is To Make Himself As Stupid As His Audience So They Believe They Are Clever As He.

Scandal Begins When The Police Put A Stop To It.

Squeeze Human Nature Into The Straitjacket Of Criminal Justice And Crime Will Appear.

Matrimony Is The Union Of Meanness And Martyrdom.

Virginity Is The Ideal Of Those Who Want To Deflower.

It Is Regarded As Normal To Consecrate Virginity In General And To Lust For Its Destruction In Particular.

My Respect For The Inconsiderable Is Assuming Gigantic Dimensions.

The Streets Of Vienna Are Paved With Culture, The Streets Of Other Cities With Asphalt.

A Great Deal Of Learning Can Be Packed Into An Empty Head.

If One Reads A Newspaper Only For Information, One Does Not Learn The Truth, Not Even The Truth About The Paper. The Truth Is That The Newspaper Is Not A Statement Of Contents But The Contents Themselves; And More Than That, It Is An Instigator.

Morality Is A Venereal Disease. Its Primary Stage Is Called Virtue; Its Secondary Stage, Boredom; Its Tertiary Stage, Syphilis.

Since The Law Prohibits The Keeping Of Wild Animals And I Get No Enjoyment From Pets, I Prefer To Remain Unmarried.

An Idea's Birth Is Legitimate If One Has The Feeling That One Is Catching Oneself Plagiarizing Oneself.

There Are Writers Who Can Express In As Little As Twenty Pages What I Occasionally Need As Many As Two For.

The Heroes Of Obtrusiveness, People With Whom No Soldier Would Lie Down In The Trenches, Though He Has To Submit To Being Interviewed By Them, Break Into Recently Abandoned Royal Castles So That They Can Report, "we Got There First!" It Would Be Far Less Shameful To Be Paid For Committing Atrocities Than For Fabricating Them.

Christian Morality Prefers Remorse To Precede Lust, And Then Lust Not To Follow.

The Sound Principle Of A Topsy-turvy Lifestyle In The Framework Of An Upside-down World Order Has Stood Every Test.

How Do Wars Start? Diplomats Tell Lies To Journalists, Then Believe What They Read.

In Case Of Doubt, Decide In Favor Of What Is Correct.

A Plagiarist Should Be Made To Copy The Author A Hundred Times.

I Am Already So Popular That Anyone Who Vilifies Me Becomes More Popular Than I Am.

Journalists Write Because They Have Nothing To Say, And Have Something To Say Because They Write.

Morality Is A Burglar's Tool Whose Merit Lies In Never Being Left Behind At The Scene Of The Crime.

Nothing Is More Horrible Than My Self In The Mirror Of Hysteria. Nothing Is More Vulgar Than My Style In The Hands Of Another. Toimitate Me Is To Punish Me.

Religion, Morality, And Patriotism Are Feelings That Are Manifested Only When They Are Outraged.

A Historian Is Often Only A Journalist Facing Backwards.

I Would Have Stage-fright If I Had To Speak With Every One Of The People Before Whom I Speak.

"a Cigar," Said The Altruist, "a Cigar, My Good Man, I Cannot Give You. But Any Time You Need A Light, Just Come Around; Mine Is Always Lit."

Corruption Is Worse Than Prostitution. The Latter Might Endanger The Morals Of An Individual, The Former Invariably Endangers The Morals Of The Entire Country.

Moral Corruption

How Is The World Ruled And Led To War? Diplomats Lie To Journalists And Believe These Lies When They See Them In Print.

Moral Responsibility Is What Is Lacking In A Man When He Demands It Of A Woman.

Psychology Is As Useless As Directions For Using Poison.

What Do People Have Against Convicts? Is Living Together In The Pen Of Freedom, Where Young People Engage In Mutual Psychology, Any More Beautiful?

Progress, Under Whose Feet The Grass Mourns And The Forest Turns Into Paper From Which Newspaper Plants Grow, Has Subordinated The Purpose Of Life To The Means Of Subsistence And Turned Us Into The Nuts And Bolts For Our Tools.

A Fine World In Which Man Reproaches Woman With Fulfilling His Heart's Desire!

Democracy Divides People Into Workers And Loafers. It Makes No Provision For Those Who Have No Time To Work.

The World Is A Prison In Which Solitary Confinement Is Preferable.

If Something Is Stolen From You, Don't Go To The Police. They're Not Interested. Don't Go To A Psychologist Either, Because He's Interested In Only One Thing: That It Was Really You Who Did The Stealing.

I Have Often Been Asked To Be Fair And View A Matter From All Sides. I Did So, Hoping That Something Might Improve If I Viewed Allsides Of It. But The Result Was The Same. So I Went Back To Viewing Things Only From One Side, Which Saves Me A Lot Of Work And Disappointment. For It Is Comforting To Regard Something As Bad And To Be Able To Use One's Prejudice As An Excuse.

Nowadays The Thief Cannot Be Distinguished From His Victim. Neither Has Any Valuable Objects On Him.

Talent Is Often A Defect In Character.

In A Well-run Mental Household There Ought To Be A Thorough Cleaning At The Threshold Of Consciousness A Few Times A Year.

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.

The Most Incomprehensible Talk Comes From People Who Have No Other Use For Language Than To Make Themselves Understood.

What Is A Historian? Someone Who Doesn't Write Well Enough To Work On A Daily.

Not Greeting People Isn't Enough. One Also Doesn't Greet People One Doesn't Know.

Psychoanalysis: A Rabbit That Was Swallowed By A Boa Constrictor Just Wanted To See What It Was Like In There.

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.

Humanity And Bestiality: When Will The Former Finally Be Uttered With The Flavor Of Hate And The Latter With The Flavor Of Love? Does A Lion Tear His Fellow Lion To Pieces?

It So Often Happened To Me That Someone Who Shared My Opinion Kept The Larger Share For Himself That I Am Now Forewarned And Offer People Only Ideas.

I Have Drawn From The Well Of Language Many A Thought Which I Do Not Have And Which I Could Not Put Into Words.

The Art Of An Actress Is Sublimated Sexuality. But Off The Stage The Fire Must Be Able To Reconvert The Steam Into Body.

An Artist Should Make Concessions To The Listener. That Is Why Bruckner Dedicated One Of His Symphonies To The Good Lord.

He Who Does Without The Praise Of The Crowd Will Not Deny Himself An Opportunity To Be His Own Adherent.

The Real Truths Are Those That Can Be Invented.

I Master Only The Language Of Others. Mine Does With Me What It Wants.

A Man's Jealousy Is A Social Institution; A Woman's Prostitution Is An Instinct.

Sound Opinions Are Valueless. What Matters Is Who Holds Them.

I And Life: The Case Was Settled Chivalrously. The Opponents Parted Without Having Made Up.

Sorrento, August. For Two Weeks Now I Haven't Heard A German Word Or Understood An Italian One. This Way One Can Manage To Live With People; Everything Goes Like Clockwork And No Irksome Misunderstanding Can Arise.

Morality Is The Tendency To Pour Out The Baby With The Bathwater.

So-called Psychoanalysis Is The Occupation Of Lustful Rationalists Who Trace Everything In The World To Sexual Causes--with The Exception Of Their Occupation.

The Superman Is A Premature Ideal, One That Presupposes Man.

Since The Day Man First Tried To Conquer Space, The Earth Has Been Mobilizing.

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.

The Esthete Stands In The Same Relation To Beauty As The Pornographer Stands To Love, And The Politician Stands To Life.

One Of The Most Widespread Diseases Is Diagnosis.

To Me It's Still A Greater Miracle When A Fly Flies Than When A Human Being Undertakes To Do So.

A White Lie Is Always Pardonable. But He Who Tells The Truth Without Compulsion Merits No Leniency.

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.

Satires Which The Censor Can Understand Are Justly Forbidden

How Powerful Social Mores Are! Only A Spider's Web Lies Across The Volcano, Yet It Refrains From Erupting.

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.

A Bibliophile Has Approximately The Same Relationship To Literature As A Philatelist To Geography.

Love And Art Do Not Embrace What Is Beautiful But What Is Made Beautiful By This Embrace.

Through My Satire I Make Little People So Big That Afterwards They Are Worthy Objects Of My Satire And No One Can Reproach Me Any Longer.

Curses On The Law! Most Of My Fellow Citizens Are The Sorry Consequences Of Uncommitted Abortions.

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