A "modern" man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.
- Elias Canetti Quote

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 Quote

As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.
- Elias Canetti Quote

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 Quote

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.
- Elias Canetti Quote

Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.
- Elias Canetti Quote

One should use praise to recognize what one is not.
- Elias Canetti Quote

People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.
- Elias Canetti Quote

Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true.
- Elias Canetti Quote

Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.
- Elias Canetti Quote

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 Quote

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.
- Elias Canetti Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.
- Elias Canetti Quote

Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.
- Elias Canetti Quote