# Kurt Tucholsky's best-known quotes

What may satire do? Everything. Plus international stupidity, the dog that only barks and the German who plays Skat: Kurt Tucholsky's sharpest lines, sourced from Die Weltbühne and his letters.

- 3 votes · 12 items
- Nov 19, 2025 · clara_zocker
- https://even.best/en/l/4948/kurt-tucholsky-s-best-known-quotes

## Top 12

1. **For that is humour: seeing through things as if they were made of glass.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Letter to Mary Gerold, 4 October 1918.
2. **What may satire do? Everything.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — What May Satire Do?, Berliner Tageblatt, 1919.
3. **The satirist is a wounded idealist: he wants the world to be good, it is bad, and so he charges against the bad.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — What May Satire Do?, 1919.
4. **Human stupidity is international.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — "Hégésippe Simon", Die Weltbühne, 15 December 1931.
5. **Dog owners are the most inconsiderate people in the world.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — "Treatise on the Dog", Die Weltbühne, 2 August 1927.
6. **When a German's heart is truly content, he doesn't sing. He plays Skat.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Das neue Lied.
7. **For what the Church cannot prevent, it blesses.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — A Pyrenees Book (1927).
8. **The reader has it easy: he can choose his writers.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — "Snippets", Die Weltbühne, 3 February 1931.
9. **Expect nothing. Today: that is your life.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — "Snippets", Die Weltbühne, 15 September 1931.
10. **A man's worth does not depend on his pay book.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Letter to Walter Hasenclever, 4 March 1933.
11. **Your own dog doesn't make noise; it just barks.** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Uhu, 1 June 1930.
12. **This is the truest of all democracies, the democracy of death.** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — "Fear", Die Weltbühne, 9 July 1929.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.