Elias Canetti quotes

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well. (Elias Canetti)
All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.
Elias Canetti
His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations.
Elias Canetti
Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.
Elias Canetti
One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.
Elias Canetti
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.
Elias Canetti
Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf.
Elias Canetti
Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.
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
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.
Elias Canetti
Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding. (Elias Canetti)
When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.
Elias Canetti
The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.
Elias Canetti
I cannot become modest; too many things burn in me; the old solutions are falling apart; nothing has been done yet with the new ones. So I begin, everywhere at once, as if I had a century ahead of me.
Elias Canetti
It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.
Elias Canetti
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.
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
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
Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true.
Elias Canetti
Most religions do not make men better, only warier.
Elias Canetti
Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous. (Elias Canetti)
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.
Elias Canetti
Travelling, one accepts everything; indignation stays at home. One looks, one listens, one is roused to enthusiasm by the most dreadful things because they are new. Good travellers are heartless.
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
He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.
Elias Canetti