Franz Kafka Quotes

The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading; every man that tries it finds it so. But a great book that comes from a great thinker, — it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth, with beauty too.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?

The highest compliment one can give a writer is not to say that one wholeheartedly agrees with his observations, but that he provoked - really, forced - difficult thinking about consequential matters and internal questioning of one's own assumptions, often without quick or clear resolution.

Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

I only surround myself with people who are intellectually stimulating.

I want to write a book that makes people debate, and makes people think, interact with each other and exchange ideas... I write because I'm engaged in this big conversation.

The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most.

Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a 'read,' commits an anthropological crime, in the first place against himself.

It's not easy having a good marriage--but I don't want easy. Easy doesn't make you grow. Easy doesn't make you think. I thank God everyday that I am married to a man who makes me think. That's my definition of true love.

If I'm reading a book that doesn't leave me with questions, moving questions, that I feel confronted with, then for me it's a waste of time. I don't want to read a book that simply confirms what I already know.

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

When you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.

I believe in choosing the hardest book imaginable. I believe in reading up on what others have to say about this difficult book, and then making up my own mind.

I think watching a movie that simply confirms my feelings is a waste of time. That applies not only to movies, but also to books and every form of art.

I believe that before anything else I'm a human being -- just as much as you are... or at any rate I shall try to become one. I know quite well that most people would agree with you, Torvald, and that you have warrant for it in books; but I can't be satisfied any longer with what most people say, and with what's in books. I must think things out for myself and try to understand them.

The best book is not one that informs merely, but one that stirs the reader up to inform himself.

I want to make people think, and I don't want to come across like I am egotistical or that I want to change people's thoughts. I don't believe that as a comic I can convert anyone's opinion. I think I can maybe make someone look in one direction or the other but I can't make a religious person stop believing in God.

What makes a good book? Scholars and critics have been debating that question for decades. I like books that touch my head and my heart at the same time.

Fiction allows for moral questioning, but through the back door. Personally, I like books that make you think - books you're still wondering about three days after you finish them; books you hand to a friend and say "Read this, so we can talk about it."

A principal aim of education is to give students a taste for literature, for the books of life and power, and to accomplish this, it is necessary that their minds be held aloof from the babblement and discussions of the hour, that they may accustom themselves to take interest in the words and deeds of the greatest men, and so make themselves able and worthy to shape a larger and nobler future; but if their hours of leisure are spent over journals and reviews, they will, in later years, become the helpless victims of the newspaper habit.

I read for growth, firmly believing that what you are today and what you will be in five years depends on two things: the people you meet and the books you read.

A book is valuable not only for what it says but for what it makes you think, or causes you to remember. No matter what you wish to do or become there are books to teach you, help you, guide you.

Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove. And if the Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will prove the thought so conclusively that you will never talk a person out of such a belief, even if it is something as remarkable as the notion that there is a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft ("GOD") who will spend all eternity torturing people who do not believe in his religion.

Most people don't like to think. This is why human religions are so popular. It almost doesn't matter what the belief system is, as long as it's firm, consistent, clear in its expectation of the follower, and rigid. Given those characteristics, you can find people who believe in almost anything. It's God's way, they say. God's word. And there are those who will accept that. Gladly. Because, you see, it eliminates the need to think.