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War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that the enemy too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.

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More quotes by Karl Kraus

Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence.

In These Great Times : A Karl Kraus Reader (1976)

The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he.

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

The tyranny of necessity grants its slaves three kinds of freedom: opinion free from intellect, entertainment free from art, and orgies free from love.

In These Great Times : A Karl Kraus Reader (1976)

My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.

An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.

All Karl Kraus quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Karl Kraus (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.