Karl Kraus Quotes

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"A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation."

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave."

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