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

-Karl Kraus

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Sound Opinions Are Valueless.

Karl Kraus

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

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

The Immorality Of Men Triumphs Over The Amorality Of Women.

A Woman Who Cannot Be Ugly Is Not Beautiful.

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 Art And The Businessman Make It Work.

The Real Truths Are Those That Can Be Invented.

Family Life Is An Encroachment On Private Life.

Parliamentarianism Means Putting Political Prostitution In Barracks.

Most Critics Write Critiques Which Are By The Authors They Write Critiques About. That Would Not Be So Bad, But Then Most Authorswrite Works Which Are By The Critics Who Write Critiques About Them.

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

Psychoanalysis Is The Mental Illness It Purports To Cure

Let My Style Capture All The Sounds Of My Time. This Should Make It An Annoyance To My Contemporaries. But Later Generations Should Hold It To Their Ears Like A Seashell In Which There Is The Music Of An Ocean Of Mud.

Medicine: "your Money And Your Life!

I Am Not For Women But Against Men.

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

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

Today's Literature: Prescriptions Written By Patients.

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

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

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

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.

Artists Have A Right To Be Modest And A Duty To Be Vain.

In A Hollow Head There Is Much Room For Knowledge.

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

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

Masculine And Feminine

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.

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

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

Truth Is A Clumsy Servant That Breaks The Dishes While Washing Them.

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

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.

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.

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

The Blind Won't Admit That I Have Eyes In My Head, And The Deaf Say That I'm Dumb.

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.

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

An Illusion Of Depth Often Occurs If A Blockhead Is A Muddlehead At The Same Time

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

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.

Sexual Enlightenment Is That Hardhearted Process Which For Hygienic Reasons Forbids Young People To Satisfy Their Curiosity Themselves.

Many Talents Preserve Their Precociousness Right Into Old Age.

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

It Is Either A Half-truth Or A Truth And A Half.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

It Is A Mystery To Me How A Theologian Can Be Praised For Having Brought Himself To Disbelieve Dogmas. I've Always Thought That Those Who Have Brought Themselves To Believe In Dogmas Merit The True Recognition Owing A Heroic Deed.

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

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.

It Is The Mission Of The Press To Disseminate Intellect And At The Same Time Destroy Receptivity To It.

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

The Unattractive Thing About Chauvinism Is Not So Much The Aversion To Other Nations As The Love Of One's Own.

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

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

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.

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

The New Psychiatrists Say That Everything And Anything Can Be Traced Back To Sexual Causes. Their Method, For Example, Could Be Explained As The Eroticism Of Father Confessors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

There Are Women Who Are Not Beautiful But Only Look That Way.

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.

Hate Must Make A Man Productive. Otherwise One Might As Well Love.

There Are Two Kinds Of Writers, Those Who Are And Those Who Aren't. With The First, Content And Form Belong Together Like Soul And Body; With The Second, They Match Each Other Like Body And Clothes.

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

Speech Is The Mother, Not The Handmaid, Of Thought.

The Agitator Seizes The Word. The Artist Is Seized By It.

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.

The Trouble With Germans Is Not That They Fire Shells, But That They Engrave Them With Quotations From Kant.

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

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

There Is A Shortage Of Clerks. Everyone Is Going Into Journalism.

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

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

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

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

The Development Of Technology Will Leave Only One Problem: The Infirmity Of Human Nature.

In The Theater One Must Sit In Such A Way That One Sees The Audience As A Dark Mass. Then It Cannot Bother One More Than It Does An Actor. Nothing Is More Disturbing Than Being Able To Distinguish Individuals In The Crowd.

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.

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

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

A Woman Occasionally Is Quite A Serviceable Substitute For Masturbation.

A Historian Is Often Only A Journalist Facing Backwards.

On The Stage One Must Not Confuse The Nature Of A Personality With The Naturalness Of A Person.

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

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

You Don't Even Live Once.

I Trim My Opponents To Fit My Arrows.

Education Is What Most Receive, Many Pass On, And Few Possess.

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

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

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

Love Thy Neighbor

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

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.

One Cannot Dictate An Aphorism To A Typist. It Would Take Too Long.

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

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

To Be Human Is Erroneous.

An Aphorism Is Never Exactly True; It Is Either A Half-truth Or One-and-a-half Truths.

What The Teachers Digest, The Pupils Eat.

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

Matrimony Is The Union Of Meanness And Martyrdom.

Imagination Has The Right To Feast In The Shade Of The Tree That It Turns Into A Forest.

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.

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

It Is The Style Of Idealism To Console Itself For The Loss Of Something Old With The Ability To Gape At Something New.

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

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.

A Snob Is Unreliable. The Work He Praises Might Just Be Good.

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

Contemporaries Live From Second Hand To Mouth.

He Who Sleeps Half A Day Has Won Half A Life.

Scandal Begins When The Police Put A Stop To It.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Ideas Are Transplanted By Splitting, Thoughts By Sprouting.

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

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

Penalties Serve To Deter Those Who Are Not Inclined To Commit Any Crimes.

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.

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

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

My Respect For The Inconsiderable Is Assuming Gigantic Dimensions.

Jealousy Is A Dog's Bark Which Attracts Thieves.

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

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

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

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

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

My Unconscious Knows More About The Consciousness Of The Psychologist Than His Consciousness Knows About My Unconscious.

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

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

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.

A Good Writer Does Not Receive Anywhere Near The Number Of Poison-pen Letters That Is Commonly Assumed. Among A Hundred Jackassesthere Are Not Ten Who Will Admit To Being Jackasses, And At Most One Who Will Put It In Writing.

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

This Is Something That I Cannot Get Over -- That A Whole Line Could Be Written By Half A Man, That A Work Could Be Built On The Quicksand Of A Character.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Language Is The Mother Of Thought, Not Its Handmaiden.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Satires Which The Censor Can Understand Are Justly Forbidden

A Philistine Is Habitually Bored And Looks For Things That Won't Bore Him. An Artist Finds Things Boring, But Is Never Bored.

Satire That The Censor Understands Is Rightly Censored.

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

I Have Decided Many A Stylistic Problem First By My Head, Then By Heads Or Tails.

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 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.

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

"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."

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

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

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

Psychology Is A Bus That Accompanies An Airplane.

One Of The Most Widespread Diseases Is Diagnosis.

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.

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

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

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

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

Ask Your Neighbor Only About Things You Know Better Yourself. Then His Advice Could Prove Valuable.

Better Yourself

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.

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

Ingratitude Is Often Disproportionate To The Benefaction Received.

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

Life Is An Effort That Deserves A Better Cause.

One's Need For Loneliness Is Not Satisfied If One Sits At A Table Alone. There Must Be Empty Chairs As Well.

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

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.

To Be Perfect, One Lacks Only A Defect.

I Knew A Man Who Carried His Education In His Vest Pocket Because There Was More Room There Than In His Head.

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