Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.
A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.
My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.
My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.
Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone’s slave.
Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.
Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.
To be sure, the dog is loyal. But why, on that account, should we take him as an example? He is loyal to man, not to other dogs.
Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?
Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.
He who does without the praise of the crowd will not deny himself an opportunity to be his own adherent.
There is no more unfortunate creature under the sun than a fetishist who yearns for a woman’s shoe and has to settle for the whole woman.
Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy.
Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.
On the stage one must not confuse the nature of a personality with the naturalness of a person.
So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes – with the exception of their occupation.
I saw a poet chase a butterfly in a meadow. He put his net on a bench where a boy sat reading a book. It’s a misfortune that it is usually the other way round.
Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden.
How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
Progress, under whose feet the grass mourns and the forest turns into paper from which newspaper plants grow, has subordinated the purpose of life to the means of subsistence and turned us into the nuts and bolts for our tools.