Life & Wisdom Quote by Karl Kraus

Kraus is needling the modern hunger for applause by pointing out a quieter, more stubborn vanity: when you stop chasing the crowd, you don’t stop craving affirmation - you just change the source. The man who can “do without the praise of the crowd” sounds like a stoic hero, but Kraus flips him into a subtler opportunist. He’ll still seize “an opportunity to be his own adherent,” converting solitude into a private fan club.

The syntax does the work. “Will not deny himself” frames self-approval as a little indulgence, like a dessert you’ve earned. “Opportunity” makes it situational and strategic, not principled: the self-sufficient type is watching for moments to congratulate himself. “Adherent” is the killer word. It’s religious, ideological - the language of discipleship. Kraus suggests the ego doesn’t just want to feel good; it wants to believe, to enlist. Self-reliance becomes self-worship.

Context matters: Kraus wrote in fin-de-siecle Vienna, a media-saturated culture he loathed, where journalism, celebrity, and politics blurred into performance. His lifelong project was exposing how public language manufactures false authority. Here he adds a second target: the moral cachet of anti-popularity itself. Even contempt for the masses can become a form of status, a way to win an argument without ever risking the messy work of persuasion.

The intent is less to celebrate independence than to warn how easily critique mutates into identity. If you’re not careful, escaping the crowd’s praise just trades one audience for another: the most loyal follower you’ll ever have, yourself.