"Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis."
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Quote collection
Karl Kraus quotes (page 5 of 14)
263 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Penalties serve to deter those who are not inclined to commit any crimes."
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"Many desire to kill me, and many wish to spend an hour chatting with me. The law protects me from the former."
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"There are people who can never forgive a beggar for their not having given him anything."
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"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."
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"Progress celebrates victories over nature. Progress makes purses out of human skin. When people were traveling in mail coaches, the world got ahead better than it does now that salesmen fly through the air. What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way? How will the heirs of this age be taught the most basic motions that are necessary to activate the most complicated machines? Nature can rely on progress; it will avenge it for the outrage it has perpetrated on it."
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"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."
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"An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself."
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"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."
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"Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions."
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"I and life: The case was settled chivalrously. The opponents parted without having made up."
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"It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new."
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"Hate must make a man productive. Otherwise one might as well love."
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"Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence."
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"A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants."
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"So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes--with the exception of their occupation."
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"Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy."
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"The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable."
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"I trim my opponents to fit my arrows."
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"Language is the only chimera whose illusory power is endless, the inexhaustibility which keeps life from being impoverished. Let men learn to serve language."
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