Quotes from Elias Canetti

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

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?

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

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.

It is important what a man still plans at the end. It shows the measure of injustice in his death.

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.

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

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

...how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?

One should use praise to recognize what one is not.

The trouble is, I am not at peace with myself; I am not always something, and if for once I am something, I pay for it by being nothing for months on end.' —Kafka, quoted by Canetti

Each organism raises its head over a field of corpses, smiles into the sun, and declares life good.

seizing and incorporating...There is nothing about us which is more strongly primitive. [p. 203]

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

A murder shared with many others, which is not only safe and permitted, but indeed recommended, is irresistible to the great majority of men.

How unfair, he thought; I can close my mouth whenever I like, as tight as I like, and what has a mouth to say? It is there for taking in nourishment, yet it is well defended, but ears - ears are a prey to every onslaught.

You keep taking note of whatever confirms your ideas — better to write down what refutes and weakens them!

Every command consists of momentum and sting. The momentum forces the recipient to act, and to act in accordance with the content of the command; the sting remains behind in him. When a command functions normally and as one expects, there is nothing to be seen of the sting; it is hidden and unsuspected and may only reveal its existence by some faint, scarcely perceptible recalcitrance before the command obeyed.

For him [Kafka], the most tormenting thing about his notion of marriage must have been its ruling out the possibility of one's ever becoming so small as to be able to vanish: one has to be there.

The freedom to fail is preserved, as a sort of supreme law, which guarantees escape at every fresh juncture. One is inclined to call this the freedom of the weak person who seeks salvation in defeat. His true uniqueness, his special relation to power, is expressed in the prohibition of victory. All calculations originate and end in impotence.

Das Nicht-Wissen darf am Wissen nicht verarmen.

Every command leaves behind a painful sting in the person who is forced to carry it out.

E, então, o tempo, o tempo verdadeiramente físico, não se orienta pelo relógio; ele é antes, e no mais das vezes, uma função da atmosfera na qual transcorre. É, portanto, extraordinariamente difícil determinar, mesmo aproximadamente, quando um se juntou de fato à companhia dos outros, quando o outro se levantou e quando o terceiro realmente partiu.