Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti
Elias Canettiwas a German language author, born in Bulgaria, and later a British citizen. He was a modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist and non-fiction writer. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power"...
NationalitySwiss
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 July 1905
CountrySwitzerland
Elias Canetti quotes about
want smashing whole
I want to keep smashing myself until I am whole.
war want firsts
Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.
acceptance self want
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.
men want able
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.
thinking speaks-out enemy
It is always the enemy who started it, even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it.
philosophical despair may
Everything one records contains a grain of hope, no matter how deeply it may come from despair.
hate self people
People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.
men opposites feelings
It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite… The reversal of fear of being touched belongs to the nature of crowds. The feeling of relief is most striking where the density of the crowd is greatest
order hands philosopher
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.
might goodness capability
As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.
names magic statistics
You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic.
use praise should
One should use praise to recognize what one is not.
children parenting practice
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.
beauty
Beauty always has something remote.