Hugo Ball Quotations

The symbolic view of things is a consequence of long absorption in images. Is sign language the real language of Paradise?

We should burn all libraries and allow to remain only that which everyone knows by heart. A beautiful age of the legend would then begin.

No such thing as humanity without flaws.

It's inspiration that counts, not the drill.

What is generally termed reality is, to be precise, a frothy nothing.

Everywhere, the ethical predicament of our time imposes itself with an urgency which suggests that even the question Have we anything to eat? will be answered not in material but in ethical terms.

I don't want words that other people have invented. All the words are other people's inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own.

Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance.