Quotes from Elias Canetti

The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else.

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

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

People's fates are simplified by their names.

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.

Most religions do not make men better, only warier.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.

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

He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.

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.

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

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.

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.

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

Our forefathers did without sugar until the 13th century, without coal fires until the 14th, without buttered bread until the 16th, without tea or soup until the 17th, without gas, matches or electricity until the 20th

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