All Elias Canetti Quotes
One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.
Elias Canetti
64% of people like this quote
Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.
Elias Canetti
57% of people like this quote
As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.
Elias Canetti
55% of people like this quote
Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.
Elias Canetti
55% of people like this quote
The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.
Elias Canetti
55% of people like this quote
The planet's survival has become so uncertain that any effort, any thought that presupposes an assured future amounts to a mad gamble.
Elias Canetti
54% of people like this quote
Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true.
Elias Canetti
54% of people like this quote
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.
Elias Canetti
54% of people like this quote
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.
Elias Canetti
54% of people like this quote
It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.
Elias Canetti
54% of people like this quote
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?
Elias Canetti
53% of people like this quote
Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.
Elias Canetti
52% of people like this quote
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.
Elias Canetti
52% of people like this quote
There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.
Elias Canetti
51% of people like this quote
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