Austrian Quotes

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

We will smite the Jews where we meet them and whoever goes along with them must take the consequences.

The National Socialist Party in Austria never tried to hide its inclination for a greater Germany.

The Jews are the enemy of National Socialism.

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

All I wanted was to connect my moods with those of Paris. Beauty paints and when it painted most, I shot.

I am not interested in shooting new things - I am interested to see things new.

With photography a new language has been created. Now for the first time it is possible to express reality by reality. We can look at an impression as long as we wish, we can delve into it and, so to speak, renew past experiences at will.

There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.

A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?

We have all examined our past critically and are very much aware of even the unpleasant things. Now, we need to look at what we plan to do with the lessons we have learned from the past.

I declare myself an Austrian and a European. A united Europe will be a peaceful Europe.

To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature.

If you can't pay for a thing, don't buy it. If you can't get paid for it, don't sell it. Do this, and you will have calm and drowsy nights, with all of the good business you have now and none of the bad. If you have time, don't wait for time.

As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it will become clear that imperfection is the greatness of man.

The bosses of our mass media, press, radio, film and television, succeed in their aim of taking our minds off disaster. Thus, the distraction they offer demands the antidote of maximum concentration on disaster.

I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.