Elias Canetti Quotations

The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.

One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.

Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.

His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations.

Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.

Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.

The planet's survival has become so uncertain that any effort, any thought that presupposes an assured future amounts to a mad gamble.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk upright and with open eyes into their misfortune?

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.

There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.

He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.

People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.

Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf

As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.

Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.

Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.

A 'modern' man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.

The fear of burglars is not only the fear of being robbed, but also the fear of a sudden and unexpected clutch out of the darkness.

Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.

Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true

Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous.

Most religions do not make men better, only warier.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight

When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about

The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure.

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.

Words are not too old, only people are too old if they use the same words too frequently.

One should use praise to recognize what one is not.

We have no standard any more for anything, ever since human life is no longer the standard.

It is always the enemy who started it, even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it.

I want to keep smashing myself until I am whole.

People's fates are simplified by their names

Everything one records contains a grain of hope, no matter how deeply it may come from despair.

A head full of stars, just not in constellation yet.

Slumbering in every human being lies an infinity of possibilities, which one must not arouse in vain. For it is terrible when the whole man resonates with echoes and echoes, none becoming a real voice.

It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite… The reversal of fear of being touched belongs to the nature of crowds. The feeling of relief is most striking where the density of the crowd is greatest

He would like to start from scratch. Where is scratch?

In five minutes the earth would be a desert, and you cling to books.

There can be no Creator, simply because his grief at the fate of his creation would be inconceivable and unendurable.

You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic.

...how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?

History portrays everything as if it could not have come otherwise. History is on the side of what happened.

The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else.

I try to imagine someone saying to Shakespeare, 'Relax!

It is important what a man still plans at the end. It shows the measure of injustice in his death.

A person often falls very ill in order to become someone else and then returns to health much disappointed.

Beauty always has something remote.

In eternity everything is just beginning.

You draw closer to truth by shutting yourself off from mankind.

Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.

Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing. The oldest law is that which regulates it, and this is still themost important law today and, as such, has remained the basic concern of all movements which have at heart the community of human activities and of human existence in general.

I cannot become modest; too many things burn in me; the old solutions are falling apart; nothing has been done yet with the new ones. So I begin, everywhere at once, as if I had a century ahead of me.

Death is a scandal. The machine is functioning, we are all hostages

The self- explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. He learns to see himself, but suddenly, provided he was honest, all the rest appears, and it is as rich as he was, and, as a final crowning, richer.

Almost Kien was tempted to believe in happiness, that contemptible life-goal of illiterates. If it came of itself, without being hunted for, if you did not hold it fast by force and treated it with a certain condescension, it was permissible to endure its presence for a few days

There emanates from superlatives a destructive force.

A child. . . opens and closes like a blossom.

Of all the words in all languages I know, the greatest concentration is in the English word I.

Travelling, one accepts everything; indignation stays at home. One looks, one listens, one is roused to enthusiasm by the most dreadful things because they are new. Good travellers are heartless.

One has a prejudice wherever one fears a transformation.

Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster.

Speak as though it were the last sentence allowed you.

Explain nothing. Put it there. Say it. Leave.

The act of naming is the great and solemn consolation of mankind

Learning is the art of ignoring.

I would like to become tolerant without overlooking anything, persecute no one even when all people persecute me; become better without noticing it; become sadder, but enjoy living; become more serene, be happy in others; belong to no one, grow in everyone; love the best, comfort the worst; not even hate myself anymore.

It is important to say all the great thoughts again, without knowing that they have already been said.

The first effect of adjusting to other people is that one becomes boring.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown.

Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.

A ''modern'' man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.