"Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave."

Kraus, Karl on Democracy
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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."

Kraus, Karl on Discovery
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"The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test."

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

Kraus, Karl on Education
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"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."

Kraus, Karl on Education
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"A man's eroticism is a woman's sexuality."

Kraus, Karl on Eroticism
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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."

Kraus, Karl on Ideals and Idealism
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"Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work."

Kraus, Karl on Idleness
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"Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves."

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

Kraus, Karl on Journalism and Journalists
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"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."

Kraus, Karl on Journalism and Journalists
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"Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden."

Kraus, Karl on Language
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"Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life."

Kraus, Karl on Learning
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"An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half."

Kraus, Karl on Aphorisms and Epigrams
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"Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?"

Kraus, Karl on Army and Navy
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"Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom."

Kraus, Karl on Marriage
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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."

Kraus, Karl on Media
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"In these great times which I knew when they were this small; which will become small again, provided they have time left for it in these times in which things are happening that could not be imagined and in which what can no longer be imagined must happen, for if one could imagine it, it would not happen; in these serious times which have died laughing at the thought that they might become serious; which, surprised by their own tragedy, are reaching for diversion and, catching themselves red-handed, are groping for words... in these times you should not expect any words of my own from me -- none but these words which barely manage to prevent silence from being misinterpreted."

Kraus, Karl on Modern and Modernism
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"The immorality of men triumphs over the amorality of women."

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

Kraus, Karl on Morality
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"News reports stand up as people, and people wither into editorials. Clich?s walk around on two legs while men are having theirs shot off."

Kraus, Karl on News
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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."

Kraus, Karl on Progress
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"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."

Kraus, Karl on Progress
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"The psychoanalysts pick our dreams as if they were our pockets."

Kraus, Karl on Psychoanalysis
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"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."

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

Kraus, Karl on Religion
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"Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it."

Kraus, Karl on Scandal
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"Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis."

Kraus, Karl on Science and Scientists
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"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."

Kraus, Karl on Self-image
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"Intercourse with a woman is sometimes a satisfactory substitute for masturbation. But it takes a lot of imagination to make it work."

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

Kraus, Karl on Sexuality
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"He who sleeps half a day has won half a life."

Kraus, Karl on Sleep
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"Stupidity gets up early; that is why events are accustomed to happening in the morning."

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

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

Kraus, Karl on War
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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."

Kraus, Karl on War
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"Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust."

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

Kraus, Karl on Words
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"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."

Kraus, Karl on Writers and Writing
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"A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer."

Kraus, Karl on Writers and Writing
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