Austria

🇦🇹Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy

analytic philosophy

1845–1925

"What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts."

🇦🇹Franz Kafka

Literature

Realism

1894–1924

"From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you."

🇦🇹Viktor Frankl

Psychology

1905–1997

"If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death."

🇦🇹Friedrich Hayek

Philosophy

1899–1992

"Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom."

🇦🇹Arnold Schwarzenegger

Politics

b. 1947

"We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late... The science is clear. The global warming debate is over."

"Close to Sorgadoari is a building constructed lengthways by Nabalray- a Hindu, a formerly lieutenant of the Governor of this region."

"And no matter how serious an environmental problem the automobile poses in today's big city, the horse was dirtier, smelled worse, killed and maimed more people, and congested the streets just as much."

🇦🇹Ludwig von Bertalanffy

Science

1901–1972

"Cybernetics, based upon the principle of feedback or circular causal trains providing mechanisms for goal-seeking and self-controlling behavior."

"Being covered in white paint ,you demonstrate behaviour intended to create a public nuisance,which did in fact cause offence to members of the public ,and created a breach of the peace and public order."

🇦🇹Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Literature

1830–1916

"None are so inconsiderate as those who demand nothing of life other than their own personal comfort."

🇦🇹Bertolt Brecht

Literature

1898–1956

"Brecht's works in English: A bibliography"

🇦🇹Fritjof Capra

Science

b. 1939

"One of the key insights of the systems approach has been the realization that the network is a pattern that is common to all life. Wherever we see life, we see networks."

🇦🇹Ludwig von Mises

Literature

Liberalism

1881–1973

"All rational action is economic. All economic activity is rational action. All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts."

🇦🇹Ernst Gombrich

1909–2001

"Even though I came from a Jewish home myself, it never entered my head that such horrors might be repeated in my own lifetime."

🇦🇹Walter Slezak

Entertainment

1902–1983

"You have to work five or six years in the theatre—in hit shows—to make people sick and tired of you, but this you can accomplish in only a few weeks on television. It's a remarkable medium."

🇦🇹Joe Zawinul

Music

1932–2007

"I ain’t scared of Beethoven or nobody when it comes to composing."

🇦🇹Eric Kandel

Medicine

b. 1929

"Because we do not have a sensory organ dedicated to space, the representation of space is a quintessentially cognitive sensibility: it is the binding problem writ large."

🇦🇹John Quincy Adams

Politics

"Poems of religion and society.: With notices of his life and character by John Davis and T. H. Benton"

🇦🇹Wilhelm Stekel

Psychology

1868–1940

"Candor is always a double-edged sword; it may heal or it may separate."

🇦🇹Peter L. Berger

Religion

1929–2017

"Social order is a human product, or more precisely, an ongoing human production."

🇦🇹Elfriede Jelinek

Literature

b. 1946

"The world would be a lot better off if it paid more attention to its philosophers and artists than to its own tiny egotistic spirit, which lacks an overview. People should place their belief in Beethoven and Socrates."

🇦🇹Gottfried Helnwein

Art

b. 1948

"Helnwein is one of the few exciting painters we have today."

🇦🇹Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Art

modern art

1928–2000

"Pictures of his Project Living beneath the rain tower"

🇦🇹Artur Schnabel

Philosophy

1882–1951

"I am attracted only to music which I consider to be better than it can be performed. Therefore I feel that unless a piece of music presents a problem to me, a never-ending problem, it doesn't interest me too much."

🇦🇹Kurt Schuschnigg

Politics

1897–1977

"Neither the free will of the people nor the right of self-determination nor even the consent of a majority of convinced National-Socialists can be cited as justification for the obliteration of Austria after 1938."

"The bond price, and, as an arithmetical and rigid consequence, the interest rate is an inherently restless variable."

"A good piece of art must combine barbarism and culture: two unique elements..."

🇦🇹Alfred Brendel

Music

1931–2025

"You need three or five hands to play Ligeti."

🇦🇹Arthur Seyss-Inquart

Literature

1892–1946

"Death by hanging...well, in view of the whole situation, I never expected anything different. It's all right."

🇦🇹Erich Fried

Literature

1921–1988

"Do not doubt him who tells you he is afraid, but be afraid of him who tells you he has no doubts."

🇦🇹Werner Herzog

Entertainment

New German Cinema

b. 1962

"We ought to be grateful that the Universe out there knows no smile."

🇦🇹Paul Karl Feyerabend

Philosophy

1924–1994

"Rational discourse is only one way of presenting and examining an issue and by no means the best. Our new intellectuals are not aware of its limitations and of the nature of the things outside."

"Our methods were becoming more sophisticated, but their yield seemed increasingly commonplace. To stem a descent into triviality, I thought, we needed to search out the causes of the present in the past."

🇦🇹Viktor Schauberger

Science

1885–1958

"I think it would have been much better if Newton had contemplated how the apple got up there in the first place!"

🇦🇹Johannes Grenzfurthner

Entertainment

b. 1975

"Strange to see radical anti-Semites using Facebook. I'd like to call that Zuckerberg's Paradox."

🇦🇹Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Economics

1909–1999

"For the average person, all problems date to World War II; for the more informed, to World War I; for the genuine historian, to the French Revolution."

🇦🇹Richard von Mises

Mathematics

1883–1953

"The theory of probability can never lead to a definite statement concerning a single event."

"Hitler explained quietly that he wanted these things done. It is of interest that no one objected or talked back. It was law and it was genius speaking."

🇦🇹Robert Musil

Philosophy

1880–1942

"… the restricting of intellectual and spiritual needs to the mania of progress"

🇦🇹Otto Neurath

Philosophy

1882–1945

"The motivationless theory of goods can bridge the gulf between history and exact research by securing the important continuity of the research, being linked to both."