Quotes from Elias Canetti

You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic.

The unity of a nation consists mainly in its being able to act, when necessary, like a single paranoiac.

History portrays everything as if it could not have come otherwise. History is on the side of what happened.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

People who cannot find their way out of history are lost, and so are their nations.

Some sentences release their poison only after years.

A modern man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.

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.

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

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.

The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.

The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. He learns to see himself, but suddenly, provided he was honest, all the rest appears, and it is as rich as he was, and, as a final crowning, richer.

There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.

Relearn astonishment.

All things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.

A head full of stars, just not in constellation yet.