Quotes from Elias Canetti

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

Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.

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

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well.

You keep taking note of whatever confirms your ideas — better to write down what refutes and weakens them!

Savor powerlessness, after power, in every phase that matches it precisely; replace every old triumph with the new defeat; strengthen yourself on your weakness; win yourself back when so very lost.

The crowd is the same everywhere, in all periods and cultures; it remains essentially the same among men of the most diverse origin, education and language. Once in being, it spreads with the utmost violence. Few can resist its contagion; it always wants to go on growing and there are no inherent limits to its growth. It can arise wherever people are together, and its spontaneity and suddenness are uncanny.

There is, in Kafka, a sort of sleep-worship; he regards sleep as a panacea.

In the hierarchy of man's activities, eating was the lowest. Eating had become the object of a cult, but in fact it was but the preliminary to other, utterly contemptible motions. It occurred to him that he wanted to perform one of these too.

Pero hoy la guerra ya no es guerra. Ya no es el hombre quien cuenta, la máquina lo es todo.

La promesa de la inmortalidad basta para poner en pie una religión.