Top 200 Karl Kraus Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Artists have a right to be modest and a duty to be vain.”

— Karl Kraus

152. “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.”

— Karl Kraus

153. “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.”

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

155. “A historian is not always a prophet facing backwards, but a journalist is always someone who afterwards knew everything beforehand.”

— Karl Kraus

156. “There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way.”

— Karl Kraus

157. “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.”

— Karl Kraus

158. “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.”

— Karl Kraus

159. “It is not true that one cannot live without a woman. It is simply that one cannot have lived without one.”

— Karl Kraus

160. “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.”

— Karl Kraus

161. “What are all the orgies of Bacchus when compared to the intoxication of someone who completely surrenders to continence!”

— Karl Kraus

162. “I master only the language of others. Mine does with me what it wants.”

— Karl Kraus

163. “A snob is unreliable. The work he praises might just be good.”

— Karl Kraus

164. “What do people have against convicts? Is living together in the pen of freedom, where young people engage in mutual psychology, any more beautiful?”

— Karl Kraus

165. “Politics is what a man does in order to conceal what he is and what he himself does not know.”

— Karl Kraus

166. “To be human is erroneous.”

— Karl Kraus

167. “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.”

— Karl Kraus

168. “I have decided many a stylistic problem first by my head, then by heads or tails.”

— Karl Kraus

169. “Children today laugh at fathers who tell them about dragons. It is necessary to make fear a required subject; otherwise children will never learn it.”

— Karl Kraus

170. “A plagiarist should be made to copy the author a hundred times.”

— Karl Kraus

171. “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.”

— Karl Kraus

172. “Stupidity gets up early; that is why events are accustomed to happening in the morning.”

— Karl Kraus

173. “I have drawn from the well of language many a thought which I do not have and which I could not put into words.”

— Karl Kraus

174. “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.”

— Karl Kraus

175. “One cannot dictate an aphorism to a typist. It would take too long.”

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

177. “Ask your neighbor only about things you know better yourself. Then his advice could prove valuable.”

— Karl Kraus

178. “Since the day man first tried to conquer space, the earth has been mobilizing.”

— Karl Kraus

179. “I have often been asked to be fair and view a matter from all sides. I did so, hoping something might improve if I viewed all sides 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 be able use one’s prejudice as an excuse.”

— Karl Kraus

180. “The psychoanalysts pick our dreams as if they were our pockets.”

— Karl Kraus

181. “When I take up my pen, nothing can happen to me. Fate, remember that.”

— Karl Kraus

182. “Sexual enlightenment is that hardhearted process which for hygienic reasons forbids young people to satisfy their curiosity themselves.”

— Karl Kraus

183. “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.”

— Karl Kraus

184. “The art of an actress is sublimated sexuality. But off the stage the fire must be able to reconvert the steam into body.”

— Karl Kraus

185. “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.”

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

187. “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.”

— Karl Kraus

188. “An idea’s birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.”

— Karl Kraus

189. “Blushing, palpitations, a bad conscience – this is what you get if you haven’t sinned.”

— Karl Kraus

190. “Morality is the tendency to pour out the baby with the bathwater.”

— Karl Kraus

191. “One cleans someone else’s threshold of consciousness only if one’s own home is dirty.”

— Karl Kraus

192. “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.”

— Karl Kraus

193. “Psychoanalysts are father confessors who like to listen to the sins of the father as well.”

— Karl Kraus

194. “You’d be surprised how hard it can often be to translate an action into an idea.”

— Karl Kraus

195. “They judge lest they be judged.”

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

197. “So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes – with the exception of their occupation.”

— Karl Kraus

198. “Penalties serve to deter those who are not inclined to commit any crimes.”

— Karl Kraus

199. “It is regarded as normal to consecrate virginity in general and to lust for its destruction in particular.”

— Karl Kraus

200. “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.”

— Karl Kraus