Karl Kraus Quotes

If the Coastal Republic had believed in the existence of virtue, it could at least have aspired to hypocrisy.

Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson.

Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality.

That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.

I have yet to meet a man as fond of high moral conduct as he is of outward appearances.

The eleventh commandment, "Thou shalt not be found out" is despicable, but nevertheless, it is the one thing you can never get away from.

Hypocrisy is not a way of getting back to the moral high ground. Pretending you're moral, saying your moral is not the same as acting morally.

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.

The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.

There's hostility to lying, and there should be.

Once he saw the officials of a temple leading away some one who had stolen a bowl belonging to the treasurers, and said, "The great thieves are leading away the little thief."

Morality is the thing upon which your friends smile, and immorality is the thing upon which they frown

Virtue sometimes pretends. Vice is always sincere.

So from then on, he looked at all his choices and said, What would a good person do, and then did it. But he has now learned something very important about human nature. If you spend your whole life pretending to be good, then you are indistinguishable from a good person. Relentless hypocrisy eventually becomes the truth.

I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

It must be a good thing to be good or ivrybody wudden't be pretendin' he was.

Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.

There was no other God, religion, or lawful magistracy, than conscience, which teaches all men the precepts of Justice, to do no injury, to live honestly, and give everyone his due.

When goodness is lost, it is replaced by morality.

We talk so much about one's rights... so little about what is actually right.

You know, there's a right and wrong way to do everything.

After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

People seldom tell the truths that are worth telling. We ought to choose our truths as carefully as we choose our lies and to select our virtues with as much thought as we bestow upon the selection of our enemies.

The Moral Sense teaches us what is right, and how to avoid it-when unpopular.

Have you no morals, man?' 'Can't afford them,Governor.