Top 200 Karl Kraus Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way.”

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

153. “The blind won’t admit that I have eyes in my head, and the deaf say that I’m dumb.”

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

157. “I don’t like to meddle in my private affairs.”

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

159. “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

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

— Karl Kraus

161. “To be human is erroneous.”

— Karl Kraus

162. “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

163. “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

164. “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

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

168. “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

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

— Karl Kraus

170. “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

171. “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

172. “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

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

— Karl Kraus

174. “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

175. “My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.”

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

179. “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

180. “The difference between psychiatrists and other mentally disturbed people is something like the relationship between concave and convex madness.”

— Karl Kraus

181. “They judge lest they be judged.”

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

185. “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

186. “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

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

191. “Satire chooses and knows no objects. It arises by fleeing from them and their forcing themselves upon it.”

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

193. “Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life.”

— Karl Kraus

194. “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

195. “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

196. “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

197. “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.”

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

199. “If someone calls me vain and mean, I know that he trusts me and has something to confess to me.”

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus