Karl Kraus

“Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.”

“Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.”

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

“I am already so popular that anyone who vilifies me becomes more popular than I am.”

“Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.”

“Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.”

“The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.”

“Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.”

“Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.”

“Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.”

“It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.”

“I don't like to meddle in my private affairs.”

“Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions.”

“If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The mission of the press is to spread culture while destroying the attention span.”