Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.
Karl KrausRead
It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Idealism finds comfort in the new when it loses something valuable.
In this quote, Karl Kraus reflects on the nature of idealism, suggesting that individuals who hold idealistic views often cope with the sadness of losing the familiar by embracing the possibilities and excitement of new experiences. This highlights the duality of human emotions, where loss and gain coexist, and encourages a perspective that values change and growth.
Themes
IdealismChangeLossNew BeginningsGrowth
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about embracing change in our lives.
More from Karl Kraus
All quotes βThe mission of the press is to spread culture while destroying the attention span.
Karl KrausRead
War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.
Karl KrausRead
Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.
Karl KrausRead
Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.
Karl KrausRead
Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.
Karl KrausRead
Similar quotes
Identitarianism assumes that people are condemned to identify with the positive (ethnic/ gender/ nationalistic) predicates they possess, as if their subjectivity were exhausted by those properties. Exactly the opposite is the case: the authentic dimension of subjectivity consists not in any positive identity but in that which makes identifications.
Mark FisherRead
How happy the station which every moment furnishes opportunities of doing good to thousands! How dangerous that which every moment exposes to the injuring of millions!
Jean De La BruyereRead
Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees.
E. F. SchumacherRead
The cross is the surest, truest and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God.
N. T. WrightRead
Capitalism has been interpreted as an exclusively profit-centric human engagement. Some have been saying to bring people and planet into the picture. This can be a good change, but it is still not fully operationalized. Are you putting people, planet and profit at the same level?
Muhammad YunusRead
There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.
Barbara KingsolverRead