Karl Kraus Quotes

No one wins a war. It is true, there are degrees of loss, but no one wins.

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

War is the greatest failure of mankind.

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

War... is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror.

Avoid war, because that always pushes human beings backward.

There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.

War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.

In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.

War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.

It makes twenty years or more of peace to make a man. It takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him.

I cannot consent to the bloody consequence of so silly a contest about so silly an object, conducted in the silliest manner … from which we are likely to derive nothing but poverty, disgrace, defeat, and ruin.

Wars: You know how you start, but you never know how you end.

Things don’t go well in war. You make mistakes.

Haven’t we learned that when you go to war, the outcome is unpredictable.

War is not something that can be won. Everybody loses at war.

True wars are never won.

What is our vision on this earth - war to the end of all generations and life by the sword?

The first time I experienced war, I thought the world was ending.

Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die.

There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

War is not a thing one wants.

Oftentimes, discussion of war gets flattened to a discussion of trauma.

War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.