--- title: "Karl Kraus Quotes | QuotesBy.net" description: "Karl Kraus offers sharp, cynical takeaways on truth, morality and power that will make you question everything. Read all 71 quotes on QuotesBy.net." image: "https://quotesby.net/wp-content/themes/quotesby-editorial/assets/og-default.png" --- ## Karl Kraus quotes 1. > There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way. [Permalink to quote \#1](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/1/ "Permalink to quote 1") 2. > What is the Ninth Symphony compared to a Tin Pan Alley hit played on a hurdy-gurdy and a memory? [Permalink to quote \#2](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/2/ "Permalink to quote 2") 3. > Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace. [Permalink to quote \#3](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/3/ "Permalink to quote 3") 4. > An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half. [Permalink to quote \#4](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/4/ "Permalink to quote 4") 5. > Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world. [Permalink to quote \#5](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/5/ "Permalink to quote 5") 6. > The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life. [Permalink to quote \#6](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/6/ "Permalink to quote 6") 7. > My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious. [Permalink to quote \#7](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/7/ "Permalink to quote 7") 8. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#8](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/8/ "Permalink to quote 8") 9. > Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis. [Permalink to quote \#9](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/9/ "Permalink to quote 9") 10. > I hear noises which others don't hear and which disturb for me the music of the spheres, which others don't hear either. [Permalink to quote \#10](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/10/ "Permalink to quote 10") 11. > Many share my views with me. But I don't share them with them. [Permalink to quote \#11](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/11/ "Permalink to quote 11") 12. > It so often happened to me that someone who shared my opinion kept the larger share for himself that I am now forewarned and offer people only ideas. [Permalink to quote \#12](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/12/ "Permalink to quote 12") 13. > Moral responsibility is what is lacking in a man when he demands it of a woman. [Permalink to quote \#13](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/13/ "Permalink to quote 13") 14. > A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation. It takes an abundance of imagination, to be sure. [Permalink to quote \#14](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/14/ "Permalink to quote 14") 15. > A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer. [Permalink to quote \#15](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/15/ "Permalink to quote 15") 16. > A weak man has doubts before a decision, a strong man has them afterwards. [Permalink to quote \#16](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/16/ "Permalink to quote 16") 17. > An illusion of depth often occurs if a blockhead is a muddlehead at the same time. [Permalink to quote \#17](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/17/ "Permalink to quote 17") 18. > Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow. [Permalink to quote \#18](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/18/ "Permalink to quote 18") 19. > Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions. [Permalink to quote \#19](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/19/ "Permalink to quote 19") 20. > Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work. [Permalink to quote \#20](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/20/ "Permalink to quote 20") 21. > Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave. [Permalink to quote \#21](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/21/ "Permalink to quote 21") 22. > Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots. [Permalink to quote \#22](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/22/ "Permalink to quote 22") 23. > Education is what most receive, many pass on, and few possess. [Permalink to quote \#23](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/23/ "Permalink to quote 23") 24. > Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram. [Permalink to quote \#24](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/24/ "Permalink to quote 24") 25. > Hate must make a man productive. Otherwise one might as well love. [Permalink to quote \#25](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/25/ "Permalink to quote 25") 26. > How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read. [Permalink to quote \#26](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/26/ "Permalink to quote 26") 27. > I am already so popular that anyone who vilifies me becomes more popular than I am. [Permalink to quote \#27](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/27/ "Permalink to quote 27") 28. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#28](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/28/ "Permalink to quote 28") 29. > 'It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.' [Permalink to quote \#29](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/29/ "Permalink to quote 29") 30. > Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden. [Permalink to quote \#30](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/30/ "Permalink to quote 30") 31. > Lichtenberg digs deeper than anyone: . He speaks from the subterranean depths. Only he who himself digs deep hears him. [Permalink to quote \#31](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/31/ "Permalink to quote 31") 32. > Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom. [Permalink to quote \#32](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/32/ "Permalink to quote 32") 33. > Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis. [Permalink to quote \#33](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/33/ "Permalink to quote 33") 34. > No ideas and the ability to express them- that's a journalist. [Permalink to quote \#34](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/34/ "Permalink to quote 34") 35. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#35](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/35/ "Permalink to quote 35") 36. > Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy. [Permalink to quote \#36](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/36/ "Permalink to quote 36") 37. > Psychoanalysis: a rabbit that was swallowed by a boa constrictor that just wanted to see what it was like in there. [Permalink to quote \#37](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/37/ "Permalink to quote 37") 38. > Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden. [Permalink to quote \#38](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/38/ "Permalink to quote 38") 39. > Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves. [Permalink to quote \#39](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/39/ "Permalink to quote 39") 40. > Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match. [Permalink to quote \#40](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/40/ "Permalink to quote 40") 41. > The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater the distance from which it looks back. [Permalink to quote \#41](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/41/ "Permalink to quote 41") 42. > The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people meaner. [Permalink to quote \#42](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/42/ "Permalink to quote 42") 43. > The real truths are those that can be invented. [Permalink to quote \#43](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/43/ "Permalink to quote 43") 44. > The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he. [Permalink to quote \#44](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/44/ "Permalink to quote 44") 45. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#45](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/45/ "Permalink to quote 45") 46. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#46](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/46/ "Permalink to quote 46") 47. > To me all men are equal: there are jackasses everywhere, and I have the same contempt for them all. [Permalink to quote \#47](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/47/ "Permalink to quote 47") 48. > When someone behaves like a beast, he says: 'After all, one is only human.' But when he is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, one is human.' [Permalink to quote \#48](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/48/ "Permalink to quote 48") 49. > When the sun of culture is low, even dwarves will cast long shadows. (Wenn die Sonne der Kultur tief steht, werfen selbst Zwerge lange Schatten, famous German aphorism which is contributed to Karl Kraus, yet there seems no reliable source) [Permalink to quote \#49](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/49/ "Permalink to quote 49") 50. > You don't even live once. [Permalink to quote \#50](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/50/ "Permalink to quote 50") 51. > The Life and Work of Karl Kraus [Permalink to quote \#51](https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus/51/ "Permalink to quote 51") ## Also attributed 1. > Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write. 2. > You'd be surprised how hard it can often be to translate an action into an idea. 3. > I don't like to meddle in my private affairs. 4. > A historian is not always a prophet facing backwards, but a journalist is always someone who afterwards knew everything beforehand. 5. > They judge lest they be judged. 6. > Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored. 7. > One must read all writers twice--the good as well as the bad. The one kind will be recognized; the other, unmasked. 8. > 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. 9. > The little stations are very proud because the expresses have to pass them by. 10. > The unattractive thing about chauvinism is not so much the aversion to other nations as the love of one's own. 11. > I have often been asked to be fair and view a matter from all sides. I did so, hoping that something might improve if I viewed allsides 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 to be able to use one's prejudice as an excuse. 12. > In the theater one must sit in such a way that one sees the audience as a dark mass. Then it cannot bother one more than it does an actor. Nothing is more disturbing than being able to distinguish individuals in the crowd. 13. > Many desire to kill me, and many wish to spend an hour chatting with me. The law protects me from the former. 14. > Where do I find the time for not reading so many books? 15. > Many women would like to dream with men without sleeping with them. Someone should point out to them that this is utterly impossible. 16. > He who sleeps half a day has won half a life. 17. > In a well-run mental household there ought to be a thorough cleaning at the threshold of consciousness a few times a year. 18. > Parliamentarianism means putting political prostitution in barracks. 19. > There is a cultural taste which tries very hard to get rid of the lice in a fur coat. There is another which tolerates the lice and thinks the coat can be worn with them in it. And finally there is a taste which regards the lice as the most important thing about the coat and consequently places the coat at the lice's disposal. 20. > When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "CollectionPage", "name": "Karl Kraus Quotes", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus", "about": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" }, "hasPart": [ { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "What is the Ninth Symphony compared to a Tin Pan Alley hit played on a hurdy-gurdy and a memory?", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "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.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I hear noises which others don't hear and which disturb for me the music of the spheres, which others don't hear either.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Many share my views with me. But I don't share them with them.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "It so often happened to me that someone who shared my opinion kept the larger share for himself that I am now forewarned and offer people only ideas.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Moral responsibility is what is lacking in a man when he demands it of a woman.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation. It takes an abundance of imagination, to be sure.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "A weak man has doubts before a decision, a strong man has them afterwards.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "An illusion of depth often occurs if a blockhead is a muddlehead at the same time.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karl Kraus" } } ] } { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://quotesby.net/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Authors", "item": "https://quotesby.net/authors/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "K", "item": "https://quotesby.net/authors/k/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Karl Kraus", "item": "https://quotesby.net/Karl-Kraus" } ] } ```