Karl Kraus

Morality is the tendency to pour out the baby with the bathwater.

— Karl Kraus

Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace.

— Karl Kraus

Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.

— Karl Kraus

Many share my views with me. But I don't share them with them.

— Karl Kraus

Immortality is the only thing which doesn't tolerate being postponed.

— Karl Kraus

Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram.

— Karl Kraus

Diplomacy is a game of chess in which the nations are checkmated.

— Karl Kraus

The pimp is the executive organ of immorality. The executive organ of morality is the blackmailer.

— Karl Kraus

Nationalism is the love which ties me to the blockheads of my country, to the insultors of my way of life, and…

— Karl Kraus

Through my satire I make little people so big that afterwards they are worthy objects of my satire and no one can…

— Karl Kraus

How unreliable is the woman caught being faithful! Today she is faithful to you, tomorrow to another.

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have no other use for language than to make themselves understood.

— Karl Kraus

Mankind became hysterical in the Middle Ages because it poorly repressed the sexual impressions of its Greek boyhood.

— Karl Kraus

It is the mission of the press to disseminate intellect and at the same time destroy receptivity to it.

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

Not greeting people isn't enough. One also doesn't greet people one doesn't know.

— Karl Kraus

There is a shortage of clerks. Everyone is going into journalism.

— Karl Kraus

Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?

— Karl Kraus

Hate must make a man productive. Otherwise one might as well love.

— Karl Kraus

I like to hold a monologue with women. But a dialogue with myself is more stimulating.

— Karl Kraus

A journalist is stimulated by a deadline. He writes worse when he has time

— Karl Kraus

A great deal of learning can be packed into an empty head.

— Karl Kraus

Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought.

— Karl Kraus

The little stations are very proud because the expresses have to pass them by.

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

No ideas and the ability to express them - that's a journalist.

— Karl Kraus

If children had been told that they could not blow their noses, this alone would make adults blush.

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards.

— Karl Kraus

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

— Karl Kraus

A bibliophile has approximately the same relationship to literature as a philatelist to geography.

— Karl Kraus

Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored.

— Karl Kraus

I would have stage-fright if I had to speak with every one of the people before whom I speak.

— Karl Kraus

Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions.

— Karl Kraus

Ideas are transplanted by splitting, thoughts by sprouting.

— Karl Kraus

Barbershop conversations are irrefutable proof that heads exist for the sake of hair.

— Karl Kraus