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Quotes by Austrian Authors


"Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same."


"A particularly fine head on a man usually means that he is stupid; particularly deep philosophers are usually shallow thinkers; in literature, talents not much above the average are usually regarded by their contemporaries as geniuses."


"Hatred of Judaism is at bottom hatred of Christianity."

"After the first exams, I switched to the Faculty of Philosophy and studied Zoology in Munich and Vienna."

"People, chained by monotony, afraid to think, clinging to certainties... they live like ants."

"The counterpart of the suicide is the seeker; but the difference between them is slight."

"The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace."

"Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace."


"As soon as I had proved this and, of course, also the normal pointing action and reactions in all other extremities and joints, I stopped the experiment."

"One bites into the brass mouthpiece of his wooden cudgel, and the other blows his cheeks out on a French horn. Do you call that Art?"


"Today, for a Jew who writes in the German language, it is totally impossible to make a living. In no group do I see as much misery, disappointment, desperation and hopelessness as in Jewish writers who write in German."

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

"All genius is a conquering of chaos and mystery."

"The Jews deserved to die. I have no regrets. If I had the chance I would do it again."

"Before passing different laws for different people, I'd relinquish myself unto you as your slave."

"Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness."

"The whole time I was modeling, I had a place in Paris, and a place in New York, and I was really single."


"Justice for crimes against humanity must have no limitations."

"Making pictures, for an actress, is like betting, for a gambler. Each time you make a picture you try to analyze why you won or lost."

"We are aware only of the empty space in the forest, which only yesterday was filled with trees."

"The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language."

"Most of us have no sympathy with the rich idler who spends his life in pleasure without ever doing any work. But even he fulfills a function in the life of the social organism. He sets an example of luxury that awakens in the multitude a consciousness of new needs and gives industry the incentive to fulfill them."

"We have all examined our past critically and are very much aware of even the unpleasant things. Now, we need to look at what we plan to do with the lessons we have learned from the past."

"I'd like to quit the supernatural roles and play just an interesting, down-to-earth person."


"Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness."

"The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent."

"I believe in the immortality of all creatures."

"At the same time all the houses round about promptly took part in this silence, and so did the darkness above them, reaching as far as the stars. And the footsteps of invisible passers-by, whose course I had no wish to guess at, the wind that kept on driving against the other side of the street, the gramophone singing behind closed windows in some room - they made themselves heard in this silence, as if they had owned it for ever and ever."

"To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole."

"I just use my muscles as a conversation piece, like someone walking a cheetah down 42nd Street."


"Anything that endures over time sacrifices its ability to make an impression."

"We are similar to a museum. My function is to present old masterpieces in modern frames."
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