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Quotes by Austrian Authors
"Our memory has no guarantees at all, and yet we bow more often than is objectively justified to the compulsion to believe what it says."
"Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise."
"What is called storing money is a way of using wealth. The uncertainty of the future makes it seem advisable to hold a larger or smaller part of one's possessions in a form that will facilitate a change from one way of using wealth to another, or transition from the ownership of one good to that of another, in order to preserve the opportunity of being able without difficulty to satisfy urgent demands that may possibly arise in the future for goods that will have to be obtained by way of exchange."
"Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity."
"So if you find nothing in the corridors open the doors, and if you find nothing behind these doors there are more floors, and if you find nothing up there, don't worry, just leap up another flight of stairs. As long as you don't stop climbing, the stairs won't end, under your climbing feet they will go on growing upwards."
"A third group of inflationists do not deny that inflation involves serious disadvantages. Nevertheless, they think that there are higher and more important aims of economic policy than a sound monetary system. They hold that although inflation may be a great evil, yet it is not the greatest evil, and that the State might under certain circumstances find itself in a position where it would do well to oppose greater evils with the lesser evil of inflation."
"It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought."
"Since there was nothing at all I was certain of, since I needed to be provided at every instant with a new confirmation of my existence, since nothing was in my very own, undoubted, sole possession, determined unequivocally only by me - in sober truth a disinherited son - naturally I became unsure even of the thing nearest to me, my own body."
"I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him."
"I have extremely little courage myself, much less than you; but I have found that whenever, after a long struggle, I have screwed my courage up to do something I always felt much freer & happy after it."
"One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful."
"Toward the person who has died we adopt a special attitude: something like admiration for someone who has accomplished a very difficult task."
"Herr Kafka, essen Sie keine Eier." (As one and only piece of dialog K recalls from his meeting with Rudolf Steiner - "Mr. Kafka don't eat eggs."
"Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy."
"Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor."
"If you want to expel religion from our European civilization, you can only do it by means of another system of doctrines; and such a system would from the outset take over all the psychological characteristics of religion-the same sanctity, rigidity and intolerance, the same prohibition of thought-for its own defence. You have to have something of the kind in order to meet the requirements of education. And you cannot do without education."
"Human beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit openly. Some are afraid to show even the slightest sign of affection because of fear. Fear that their feelings may not be recognized, or even worst, returned. But one thing about human beings puzzles me the most is their conscious effort to be connected with the object of their affection even if it kills them slowly within."
"Human nature, essentially changeable, unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it renders everything asunder, the wall, and the bonds and its very self."
"Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about, you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about."
"When making a decision of minor importance I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters however such as the choice of a mate or a profession the decision should come from the unconscious from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life we should be governed I think by the deep inner needs of our nature."
"So film music is something I absolutely wanna get involved in."
"The welfare of a people lies not in casting other peoples down but in peaceful collaboration."
"The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not."
"It only too often yields to the temptation to become sycophantic, opportunist and lying, like a politician who sees the truth but wants to keep his place in popular favour."
"My psycho-analytic work has convinced me that when in the baby's mind the conflicts between love and hate arise, and the fears of losing the loved one become active, a very important step is made in development."
"A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it."
"Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery."
"When a country has substituted credit money or fiat money for metallic money, because the legal equating of the over-issued paper and the metallic money sets in motion the mechanism described by Gresham's Law, it is often asserted that the balance of payments determines the rate of exchange. But this also is a quite inadequate explanation. The rate of exchange is determined by the purchasing power possessed by a unit of each kind of money."
"He who lives in the present lives in eternity."
"It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it."
"He who knows how to wait need make no concessions."
"My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection."
"Inequality of wealth and incomes is an essential feature of the market economy. It is the implement that makes the consumers supreme in giving them the power to force all those engaged in production to comply with their orders. It forces all those engaged in production to the utmost exertion in the service of the consumers. It makes competition work. He who best serves the consumers profits most and accumulatesriches."
"The truth is always an abyss. One must - as in a swimming pool - dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again - laughing and fighting for breath - to the now doubly illuminated surface of things."
"Other opportunities arise from time to time that almost don't accord with the overall situation, opportunities whereby a word, a glance, a sigh of trust may achieve more than a lifetime of exhausting endeavour."
"If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything."
"It used to be said that God could create anything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is that we could not say what an 'illogical' world would look like."
"I can tell you, dearest friend, that if it became known how much friendship, love and a world of human and spiritual references I have smuggled into these three movements, the adherents of programme music - should there be any left - would go mad with joy."
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