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Quotes of the Day for 3 July 2003 - Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was born at Prague, Bohemia on this day in 1883. His middle-class Jewish family was part of the German-speaking minority, the household was dominated by his father, a successful shopkeeper. Kafka did well in the German high school at Prague and went on to get a law degree in 1907 which allowed him a comfortable income in the insurance business. He contracted tuberculosis in 1917, retired in 1922, and died in a sanitarium in 1924. None of his novels and few of his stories were published before his death, and his will specified that all his writing should be destroyed when he died. The instructions were ignored, so it is possible to bring you these quotes.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

The history of the world, as it is written and handed down by word of mouth, often fails us completely; but man’s intuitive capacity, though it often misleads, does lead, does not ever abandon one.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

From outside one will always triumphantly impress theories upon the world and then fall straight into the ditch one has dug, but only from inside will one keep oneself and the world quiet and true.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
     - All from Franz Kafka, 1883 - 1924

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