Quotes by Austrian Authors - Page 24

Napoleon, the greatest of the conquerors, is a sufficient proof that great men of action are criminals, and therefore, not geniuses. One can understand him by thinking of the tremendous intensity with which he tried to escape from himself. There is this element in all the conquerors, great or small. Just because he had great gifts, greater than those of any emperor before him, he had greater difficulty in stifling the disapproving voice within him. The motive of his ambition was the craving to stifle his better self.
Otto Weininger
Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walkonly on feelings. That faces upwardand in its mirrorreceives heavenly roads, which travelalong themselves.That has learned to walk upon waterwhen it scoops,that walks upon wells,transfiguring every path.That steps into other hands,changes those that are like itinto a landscape:wanders and arrives within them,fills them with arrival.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Trust, trust in the world, because this human being exists - that is the most inward achievement of the relation in education. Because this human being exists, meaninglessness, however hard pressed you are by it, cannot be the real truth. Because this human being exists, in the darkness the light lies hidden, in fear salvation, and in the callousness of one's fellow-men the great Love.
Martin Buber
In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
Ivan Illich
Close your EYES,hear the RAIN, and listen to my WORDS.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
He had probably been thrown out of a wine shop, and it hadn't quite dawned on him yet.
Franz Kafka
Without exception all political parties promise their supporters a higher real income. There is no difference in this respect between nationalists and internationalists and between the supporters of a market economy and the advocates of either socialism or interventionism. If a party asks its supporters to make sacrifices for its cause, it always explains these sacrifices as the necessary temporary means for the attainment of the ultimate goal, the improvement of the material well-being of its members. Each party considers it as an insidious plot against its prestige and its survival if somebody ventures to question the capacity of its projects to make the group members more prosperous. Each party regards with a deadly hatred the economists embarking upon such a critique.
Ludwig von Mises
Bodies have their own light which they consume to live: they burn, they are not lit from the outside.
Egon Schiele
I refer to what is called mysterium iniquitatis, meaning, as I see it, that a crime in the final analysis remains inexplicable inasmuch as it cannot be fully traced back to biological, psychological and/or sociological factors. Totally explaining one’s crime would be tantamount to explaining away his or her guilt and to seeing in him or her not a free and responsible human being but a machine to be repaired. Even criminals themselves abhor this treatment and prefer to be held responsible for their deeds. From a convict serving his sentence in an Illinois penitentiary I received a letter in which he deplored that 'the criminal never has a chance to explain himself. He is offered a variety of excuses to choose from. Society is blamed and in many instances the blame is put on the victim.
Viktor E. Frankl
A lame creature, a cripple like myself, has no right to love. How should I, broken, shattered being that I am, be anything but a burden to you, when to myself I am an object of disgust, of loathing. A creature such as I, I know, has no right to love, and certainly no right to be loved. It is for such a creature to creep away into a corner and die and cease to make other people's lives a burden with her presence.
Stefan Zweig
Use time and space; grow slowly into your dreams, infinity will fill you with peace.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
We always look for everything in the immediate proximity, that is a mistake.
Thomas Bernhard
I have brought you the rose of love, and you have crowned me, in these dark hours, with their thorns.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way un which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity -even under the most difficult circumstances- to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not".
Viktor E. Frankl
At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.
Rainer Maria Rilke
The entrepreneur who is reckoning in terms of a currency with a stable value is unable to compete with the entrepreneur who is prepared to make a quasi-gift of part of his capital to his customers. In 1920 and 1921, Dutch traders who had sold commodities to Austria could buy them back again after a while much cheaper than they had originally sold them, because the Austrian traders completely failed to see that they were selling them for less than they had cost.
Ludwig von Mises
Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.
Rainer Maria Rilke
A life without envy, hatred and lies was not a life worth living.
Stefan Zweig
Fame is nothing but the sum of all the misunderstandings that cluster around a new name…Wherever a human achievement becomes truly great, it seeks to hide its face in the lap of general, nameless greatness.
Rainer Maria Rilke
I live my life in widening circleThat reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one,But I give myself to it. I circle around God, that primordial tower.I have been circling for thousands of years,And I still don't know: am I a falcon,A storm, or a great song? [I, 2]
Rainer Maria Rilke
I believe that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we find paralyzing because we no longer hear our surprised feelings living. Because we are alone with the alien thing that has entered into our self; because everything intimate and accustomed is for an instant taken away; because we stand in the middle of a transition where we cannot remain standing. For this reason the sadness too passes: the new thing in us, the added thing, has entered into our heart, has gone into its inmost chamber and is not even there any more, — is already in our blood. And we do not learn what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing has happened, and yet we have changed, as a house changes into which a guest has entered.
Rainer Maria Rilke
The disdain of profit is due to ignorance, and to an attitude that we may if we wish admire in the ascetic who has chosen to be content with a small share of the riches of this world, but which, when actualised in the form of restrictions on profits of others, is selfish to the extent that it imposes asceticism, and indeed deprivations of all sorts, on others.
Friedrich A. Hayek
But you smiled at me and said consolingly, "People come back again.""Yes" I said, "they come back, but then they have forgotten".There must have been something odd, something passionate in the way I said that to you. For you rose to your feet as well and looked at me, affectionately and very surprised. You took me by the shoulders. "What's good is not forgotten; I will not forget you," you said, and as you did so you gazed intently at me as if to memorise my image.
Stefan Zweig
I've fallen into your life, like a red ROSE from another world.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
The Average Occidental- be he a democrat or a Fascist, a Capitalist or a Bolshevik, a manual worker or an intellectual- knows only one positive "religion", and that is the worship of material progress, the belief that there is no other goal in life than to make that very life continually easier or, as the current expression goes, "independent of nature". The temples of this "religion" are the gigantic factories, cinemas, chemical laboratories, dancing halls, hydro- electric works; and its priests are bankers, engineers,film stars, captains of industry, record-airmen. The unavoidable result of this craving after power and pleasure is the creation of hostile groups armed to the teeth and determined to destroy each other whenever their respective interests come to clash. And on the cultural side the result is the creation of a human type whose morality is confined to the question of practical utility alone, and whose highest criterion of good and evil is material progress.
Muhammad Asad
It is because every individual knows little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it.
Friedrich A. Hayek
The real comic muse is the one underwhose laughing mask tears roll down.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
The truth-that love is the highest goal to which man can aspire.
Viktor E. Frankl
As regards the social apparatus of repression and coercion, the government, there cannot be any question of freedom. Government is essentially the negation of liberty. It is the recourse to violence or threat of violence in order to make all people obey the orders of the government, whether they like it or not. As far as the government’s jurisdiction extends, there is coercion, not freedom. Government is a necessary institution, the means to make the social system of cooperation work smoothly without being disturbed by violent acts on the part of gangsters whether of domestic or of foreign origin. Government is not, as some people like to say, a necessary evil; it is not an evil, but a means, the only means available to make peaceful human coexistence possible. But it is the opposite of liberty. It is beating, imprisoning, hanging. Whatever a government does it is ultimately supported by the actions of armed constables.
Ludwig von Mises
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Viktor E. Frankl
Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.
Peter F Drucker
If someone does not believe in fairies, he does not need to teach his children 'There are no fairies'; he can omit to teach them the word 'fairy'.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back.
Franz Kafka
A billion stars go spinning through the night,glittering above your head,But in you is the presence that will bewhen all the stars are dead.
Rainer Maria Rilke
In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?
Rainer Maria Rilke
Money is good for bribing yourself through the inconveniences of life.
Gottfried Reinhardt
But even though questions of currency policy are never more than questions of the value of money, they are sometimes disguised so that their true nature is hidden from the uninitiated. Public opinion is dominated by erroneous views on the nature of money and its value, and misunderstood slogans have to take the place of clear and precise ideas. The fine and complicated mechanism of the money and credit system is wrapped in obscurity, the proceedings on the Stock Exchange are a mystery, the function and significance of the banks elude interpretation. So it is not surprising that the arguments brought forward in the conflict of the different interests often missed the point altogether. Counsel was darkened with cryptic phrases whose meaning was probably hidden even from those who uttered them. Americans spoke of 'the dollar of our fathers' and Austrians of 'our dear old gulden note'; silver, the money of the common man, was set up against gold, the money of the aristocracy. Many a tribune of the people, in many a passionate discourse, sounded the loud praises of silver, which, hidden in deep mines, lay awaiting the time when it should come forth into the light of day to ransom miserable humanity, languishing in its wretchedness.
Ludwig von Mises
You misinterpret everything, even the silence.
Franz Kafka
Those who want to power know no mercy.
Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann
(She) could have read for hours, except that recently she had discovered holes and crevices between the words which she immediately had to fill with her own ideas until she was fed up with patching up the makeshift constructs.
Gerhard Amanshauser
It is illogical to say, as many etatists do, that liberalism is hostile to or hates the state, because it is opposed to the transfer of the ownership of railroads or cotton mills to the state. If a man says that sulphuric acid does not make a good hand lotion, he is not expressing hostility to sulphuric acid as such; he is simply giving his opinion concerning the limitations of its use.
Ludwig von Mises
All varieties of the producers' policy are advocated on the ground of their alleged ability to raise the party members' standard of living. Protectionism and economic self-sufficiency, labor union pressure and compulsion, labor legislation, minimum wage rates, public spending, credit expansion, subsidies, and other makeshifts are always recommended by their advocates as the most suitable or the only means to increase the real income of the people for whose votes they canvass. Every contemporary statesman or politician invariably tells his voters: My program will make you as affluent as conditions may permit, while my adversaries' program will bring you want and misery.
Ludwig von Mises
What's happened to me,' he thought. It was no dream.
Franz Kafka
Drink the nectar of love from the flowers of life.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
I am as I am, and that's all there is to it, I can hardly take a pair of scissors to myself, and cut out a different person...
Franz Kafka
No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.
Sigmund Freud
Love requires no words.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
Elisabeth had not had her future and her parents had not had theirs, there was nothing to this so-called future which was always promised to the young.
Ingeborg Bachmann
The ability to ask questions is a virtue and a trait of a free thinker.
Sabina Nore
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.
Peter Drucker
Your growing antlers,' Bambi continued, 'are proof of your intimate place in the forest, for of all the things that live and grow only the trees and the deer shed their foliage each year and replace it more strongly, more magnificently, in the spring. Each year the trees grow larger and put on more leaves. And so you too increase in size and wear a larger, stronger crown.
Felix Salten
Holding the moon in your hands, velvety, your heart beats on my lips.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
...we take care not to touch each other in public, nor do we look into each other's eyes except furtively, because Ivan must first wash my eyes with his own, removing the images which landed on my retina before his arrival.
Ingeborg Bachmann
Even if index numbers cannot fulfill the demands that theory has to make, they can still, in spite of their fundamental shortcomings and the inexactness of the methods by which they are actually determined, perform useful workaday services for the politician. If we have no other aim in view than the comparison of points of time that lie close to one another, then the errors that are involved in every method of calculating numbers may be so far ignored as to allow us to draw certain rough conclusions from them. Thus, for example, it becomes possible to a certain extent to span the temporal gap that lies, in a period of variation in the value of money, between movements of Stock Exchange rates and movements of the purchasing power that is expressed in the prices of commodities.
Ludwig von Mises
Toward the person who has died we adopt a special attitude: something like admiration for someone who has accomplished a very difficult task.
Sigmund Freud
Christianity nowadays is like a big household where many cousins live under the same roof. They all belong to the same clan, but at times they have very different ideas about how to run their family affairs. Some of them, for instance, have no use for any outside devotion. God is a spirit, and He wants to be worshipped in spirit only, they say. Consequently, they have dispensed with all liturgy. They don’t want any distracting ceremonies, no incense, no vestments, no music, no pictures and images, not even sacraments—only the service of the spirit.The trouble is, however, that as long as we live here on earth, we simply are not pure spirits, but we have also a body, and in that body, a very human heart; and this heart needs outward signs of its inward affections. That is why we embrace and kiss the one we love; and the more we love, the more ardently we press him to this very heart—somehow it seems as if these cousins had overlooked that fact. But you can’t cheat the heart; it knows what it wants, and it knows how to get it.
Maria Augusta von Trapp
Dogs are minor angels, and I don't mean that facetiously. They love unconditionally, forgive immediately, are the truest of friends, willing to do anything that makes us happy, etcetera. If we attributed some of those qualities to a person we would say they are special. If they had ALL of them, we would call them angelic. But because it's "only" a dog, we dismiss them as sweet or funny but little more. However when you think about it, what are the things that we most like in another human being? Many times those qualities are seen in our dogs every single day-- we're just so used to them that we pay no attention.
Jonathan Carroll
The law-abiding citizen by his labor serves both himself and his fellow man and thereby integrates himself peacefully into the social order. The robber, on the other hand, is intent, not on honest toil, but on the forcible appropriation of the fruits of others' labor.
Ludwig von Mises