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.
Elias Canetti

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most religions do not make men better, only warier.
Elias Canetti


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

One should use praise to recognize what one is not.
Elias Canetti

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

People's fates are simplified by their names.
Elias Canetti

Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous.
Elias Canetti

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

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

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

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

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