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Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

Karl Kraus

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Karl Kraus
Age: 62 †
Born: 1874
Born: March 28
Died: 1936
Died: June 12
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Writer
Jicin
Handmaiden
Language
Mother
Thought

More quotes by Karl Kraus

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If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.
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Diplomacy is a game of chess in which the nations are checkmated.
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Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden
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Sorrento, August. For two weeks now I haven't heard a German word or understood an Italian one. This way one can manage to live with people everything goes like clockwork and no irksome misunderstanding can arise.
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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.
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Imagination has the right to feast in the shade of the tree that it turns into a forest.
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Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.
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Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.
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Family life is an encroachment on private life.
Karl Kraus
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Many share my views with me. But I don't share them with them.
Karl Kraus
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Penalties serve to deter those who are not inclined to commit any crimes.
Karl Kraus
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The psychoanalysts pick our dreams as if they were our pockets.
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Sex education is legitimate in that girls cannot be taught soon enough how children don't come into the world.
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An aphorism is never exactly true it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.
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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.
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It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.
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Let language be the divining rod that finds the sources of thought.
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Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?
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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.
Karl Kraus
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Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.
Karl Kraus