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About this quote

What does it mean?
Kafka is credited with predicting modern authoritarian structures and legal instability.
In plain terms
He foresaw how states would control people and change laws.
What can you take from it?
Fiction can anticipate real political dangers.

Where it applies

  • analyzing modern politics
  • reading dystopian fiction
  • legal studies

Putting it to work

  • studying political fiction
  • warning against absolute power

Questions to consider

  • What predictions in fiction came true?
  • How does art foresee politics?

Another view

Attributing specific future events to fiction may overstate its predictive power.

More from Franz Kafka

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  3. Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

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