110+ Karl Kraus Quotes On Religion, Education And War

Karl Kraus was an Austrian writer, journalist, playwright, and poet active from the late 19th century through to the early 20th century. He is best known for his satirical attacks on the press and other aspects of Viennese society. Kraus was a fierce critic of the modern age and its moral decline, and his works often featured dark humour and biting satire. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Karl Kraus on religion, education, war.

Top 10 Karl Kraus Quotes

1. The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.
2. Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.
3. I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.
4. The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.
5. An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.
6. Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.
7. Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.
8. A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.
9. 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.
10. The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

Karl Kraus Image Quotes

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are. — Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus Short Quotes

• Anesthesia: wounds without pain. Neurasthenia: pain without wounds.
• A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards.
• Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples; in others, sex laws.
• An illusion of depth often occurs if a blockhead is a muddlehead at the same time
• A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation.
• Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.
• A white lie is always pardonable. But he who tells the truth without compulsion merits no leniency.
• Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.
• Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.
• Immortality is the only thing which doesn't tolerate being postponed.

Karl Kraus Quotes About Religion

Religion, morality, and patriotism are feelings that are manifested only when they are outraged. — Karl Kraus

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

When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest. — Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus Quotes About Education

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

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

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. — Karl Kraus

A comprehensive education is a well-stocked pharmacy: but we have no assurance that potassium cyanide will not be administered fora head cold. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

I knew a man who carried his education in his vest pocket because there was more room there than in his head. — Karl Kraus

What the teachers digest, the pupils eat. — Karl Kraus

A school without grades must have been concocted by someone who was drunk on non-alcoholic wine. — Karl Kraus

Education is what most receive, many pass on, and few possess. — Karl Kraus

Sex education is legitimate in that girls cannot be taught soon enough how children don — Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus Quotes About War

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

How do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists, then believe what they read. — Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus Quotes About Love

Nationalism is the love which ties me to the blockheads of my country, to the insultors of my way of life, and to the desecrators of my language. — Karl Kraus

The unattractive thing about chauvinism is not so much the aversion to other nations as the love of one's own. — Karl Kraus

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

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

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? — Karl Kraus

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

The tyranny of necessity grants its slaves three kinds of freedom: opinion free from intellect, entertainment free from art, and orgies free from love. — Karl Kraus

Love thy neighbor as thyself. Because each of us is his own neighbor. — Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus Quotes About Satirical

Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden — Karl Kraus

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

Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored. — Karl Kraus

Satire chooses and knows no objects. It arises by fleeing from them and their forcing themselves upon it. — Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus Quotes About Life

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. — Karl Kraus

He who sleeps half a day has won half a life. — Karl Kraus

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

Language is the only chimera whose illusory power is endless, the inexhaustibility which keeps life from being impoverished. Let men learn to serve language. — Karl Kraus

Family life is an encroachment on private life. — Karl Kraus

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

Life is an effort that deserves a better cause. — Karl Kraus

Medicine: "Your money and your life! — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus Quotes About World

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. — Karl Kraus

Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world. — Karl Kraus

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

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

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus Quotes About Morals

The pimp is the executive organ of immorality. The executive organ of morality is the blackmailer. — Karl Kraus

Moral responsibility is what is lacking in a man when he demands it of a woman. — Karl Kraus

Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

Morality is a burglar's tool whose merit lies in never being left behind at the scene of the crime. — Karl Kraus

Morality is the tendency to pour out the baby with the bathwater. — Karl Kraus

The immorality of men triumphs over the amorality of women. — Karl Kraus

They judge lest they be judged. — Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus Famous Quotes And Sayings

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are. — Karl Kraus

Intercourse with a woman is sometimes a satisfactory substitute for masturbation. But it takes a lot of imagination to make it work. — Karl Kraus

Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

One's need for loneliness is not satisfied if one sits at a table alone. There must be empty chairs as well. — Karl Kraus

My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious. — Karl Kraus

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

Since the law prohibits the keeping of wild animals and I get no enjoyment from pets, I prefer to remain unmarried. — Karl Kraus

When I want to go to sleep, I must first get a whole menagerie of voices to shut up. You wouldn't believe what a racket they make in my room. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

He who does without the praise of the crowd will not deny himself an opportunity to be his own adherent. — Karl Kraus

In Berlin, things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna, they are hopeless but not serious. — Karl Kraus

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

Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

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

A healthy man is content with a woman. An erotic man is content with a stocking to get to a woman. A sick man is content with thestocking. — Karl Kraus

A philistine is habitually bored and looks for things that won't bore him. An artist finds things boring, but is never bored. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

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

Truth is a clumsy servant that breaks the dishes while washing them. — Karl Kraus

Many desire to kill me, and many wish to spend an hour chatting with me. The law protects me from the former. — Karl Kraus

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

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. — Karl Kraus

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

"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." — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

The ultimate aim of psychoanalysis is to attribute art to mental weakness, and then to trace the weakness back to the point where, according to analytic dogma, it originated namely, the lavatory. — Karl Kraus

Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children? — Karl Kraus

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

There are people who can never forgive a beggar for their not having given him anything. — Karl Kraus

I am already so popular that anyone who vilifies me becomes more popular than I am. — Karl Kraus

Psychoanalysis is the mental illness it purports to cure — Karl Kraus

Cosmetics is the science of a woman's cosmos. — Karl Kraus

Psychology is a bus that accompanies an airplane. — Karl Kraus

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

Prussia: freedom of movement with a muzzle. Austria: an isolation cell in which screaming is allowed. — Karl Kraus

The real truths are those that can be invented. — Karl Kraus

The difference between psychiatrists and other mentally disturbed people is something like the relationship between concave and convex madness. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

It is either a half-truth or a truth and a half. — Karl Kraus

The psychoanalysts pick our dreams as if they were our pockets. — Karl Kraus

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

A snob is unreliable. The work he praises might just be good. — Karl Kraus

Social reform is the desperate decision to remove corns from a person suffering from cancer. — Karl Kraus

The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back. — Karl Kraus

Ask your neighbor only about things you know better yourself. Then his advice could prove valuable. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

Humanity is the washerwoman of society that wrings out its dirty laundry in tears. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

Ideas are transplanted by splitting, thoughts by sprouting. — Karl Kraus

To be human is erroneous. — Karl Kraus

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. — Karl Kraus

Sound opinions are valueless. What matters is who holds them. — Karl Kraus

Stupidity gets up early; that is why events are accustomed to happening in the morning. — Karl Kraus

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

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

To be perfect, one lacks only a defect. — Karl Kraus

The development of technology will leave only one problem: the infirmity of human nature. — Karl Kraus

Contemporaries live from second hand to mouth. — Karl Kraus

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

A man's jealousy is a social institution; a woman's prostitution is an instinct. — Karl Kraus

Life Lessons by Karl Kraus

1. Karl Kraus taught us the importance of speaking truth to power, no matter how unpopular it may be. He showed us that it is essential to stand up for what is right, even if it means facing criticism or ridicule.
2. He also taught us the importance of being critical of ourselves and our society, and to never be complacent in the face of injustice.
3. Finally, he showed us the power of satire and humor to make a point, and to challenge the status quo.