top of page
Quotes by Austrian Authors

"I was put in the Air Corps. I was never educated to serve in the military, but soon my activities in the American Air Corps became very interesting to me."

"It is not in the power of governments to increase the supply of one commodity without a corresponding restriction in the supply of other commodities more urgently demanded by consumers. The authority may reduce the price of one commodity only by raising the prices of others."

"Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so."

"You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks."

"Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made."

"That the social life of human beings is subject to definite limitations; that it is governed by a set of laws that are comparable with those of Nature; these are notions that are unknown to the etatist. For the etatist, everything is a question of Macht - power, force, might. And his conception of Macht is crudely materialistic."

"A self-fulfilling prophecy is an assumption or prediction that, purely as a result of having been made, cause the expected or predicted event to occur and thus confirms its own 'accuracy.'"

"Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity."

"Analogies it is true decide nothing but they can make one feel more at home."

"It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers,the people, the common man,prefer liquor to Bibles and detective stories to serious books, and that governments prefer guns to butter. The entrepreneur does not make greater profits in selling bad things than in selling good things. His profits are the greater the better he succeeds in providing the consumers with those things they ask for most intensely."

"A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood."

"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."

"Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to talking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young."


"The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions."

"Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom."

"So soon as a fashion is universal, it is out of date."

"There are two sighs of relief every night in the life of an opera manager. The first comes when the curtain goes up The second sigh of relief comes when the final curtain goes down without any disaster, and one realizes, gratefully, that the miracle has happened again."

"Lawyers know how to take isolated complaints in a divorce case and build them into one big one."

"So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market economy."

"Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language."

"My body is like breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don't think about it, I just have it."

"Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification."

"My table is now brightly, now dimly lighted. Its temperature varies. It may receive an ink stain. One of its legs may be broken. It may be repaired, polished, and replaced part by part. But, for me, it remains the table at which I daily write."

"I make no claim that Jewish culture is superior to other cultures or that the Jewish song is better than the song of my neighbor."

"Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life."

"To measure is to determine the ratio of one quantity to another which is invariable or assumed to be invariable. Invariability in respect of the property to be measured, or at least the legitimacy of assuming such invariability, is a sine qua non of all measurement. Only when this assumption is admissible is it possible to determine the variations that are to be measured."

"Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product."

"Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air."

"My project was radiation damage of Si and Ge by energetic electrons, critical for the use of the recently developed semiconductor devices for applications in outer space."

"From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back."

"What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness."

"I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe."

"One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory."

"And thus it happens that the reader, the closer he comes to the novel's end, the more he wishes he were back in the summer with which it begins, and finally, instead of following the hero onto the cliffs of suicide, joyfully turns back to that summer, content to stay there forever."

"It is not because I do not love my adopted land - it is the natural feeling of one far from home, who remembers those happy, carefree days when life flowed at full tide, without responsibility, flashing past one like the drama in a fascinating story of adventure and romance."

"Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift."
bottom of page