ELIAS CANETTI

When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.

People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.

The planet's survival has become so uncertain that any effort, any thought that presupposes an assured future amounts to a mad gamble.

Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.

One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.

Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true.

Words are not too old, only people are too old if they use the same words too frequently.

Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

People's fates are simplified by their names.

The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

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.

One should use praise to recognize what one is not.

Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.

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?

His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations.

Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous.

As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.

Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.

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.

Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.

Most religions do not make men better, only warier.

Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf.