Bertolt Brecht Famous Quotes
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There are times when you have to choose between being human and having good taste.
People are too durable, that's their main trouble. They can do too much to themselves, they last too long.
One must live well to know what living is.
What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?
The storm that bends the birch trees Is held to be violent But how about the storm That bends the backs of the roadworkers?
Though the rich of this earth find no difficulty in creating misery, they can't bear to see it.
People are taken much too seriously. one equals no one. anything less than two hundred at a time is not worth mentioning. of course, anybody can be of a different opinion. an opinion is of no consequence whatever. any level-headed man can level headedly adopt two or three different opinions.
He who fights, can lose. He who doesn't fight, has already lost.
Thinking is one of the greatest pleasures of the human race.
What are you working on?" Mr. K. was asked. Mr. K. replied: "I'm having a hard time; I'm preparing my next mistake.
No one will improve your lot if you do not yourself.
He says he'd like to kiss the ground you walk on-reminds me, did you wash them yesterday?- and after that you're his skivvy.
Girl Tractorist: As the poet Mayakovsky said: "The home of the Soviet people shall be the home of Reason"!
A Man lives off his head.
His head won't see him through.
Inspect your own
What lives on that?
At most, a louse or two ...
Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero!
No, Andrea ... unhappy is the land that needs a hero.
The shrill voices of those who give orders
Are full of fear like the squeakings of
Piglets awaiting the butcher's knife, as their fat arses
Sweat with anxiety in their office chairs ...
Fear rules not only those who are ruled, but
The rulers too.
You can make a fresh start with your final breath.
Poverty makes you wise but it's a curse.
We often do not know ourselves the grounds On which we act, though plain to others.
A good soldier has his heart and soul in it. When he receives an order, he gets a hard on, and when he drives his lance through his enemy's guts, he comes.
People who fight may lose. People who do not fight have already lost.
Only bad generals need heroes.
The alienation effect in German epic theater is achieved not only through the actors, but also through music (chorus and song) andsets (transparencies, film strips, etc.). Its main purpose is to place the staged events in their historical context.
With drooping shoulders The majority sit hunched, their foreheads furrowed like Stony ground that has been repeatedly ploughed-up to no purpose.
Who built the seven towers of Thebes?
The books are filled with the names of kings.
Was it kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone? ...
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? ...
There must always be some who are brighter and some who are stupider, the latter make up for it by being better workers.
In the contradiction lies the hope.
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.
There are men who struggle for a day and they are good. There are men who struggle for a year and they are better. There are men who struggle many years, and they are better still. But there are those who struggle all their lives: These are the indispensable ones.
If art reflects life, it does so with special mirrors.
Right is its own defense.
He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.
Spring is noticed, if at all By people sitting in railway trains.
As regards obstacles, the shortest distance between two points can be a curve.
If there are obstacles, the shortest line between two points may be the crooked one.
You have to attack once the truth is too weak to defend itself.
The finest plans have always been spoiled by the littleness of them that should carry them out. Even emperors can't do it all by themselves.
The war which is coming Is not the first one. There were Other wars before it. When the last one came to an end There were conquerors and conquered. Among the conquered the common people Starved. Among the conquerors The common people starved too.
War is like love; it always finds a way.
Weaknesses
You had none
I had one:
I loved.
Love is also like a coconut which is good while it is fresh, but you have to spit it out when the juice is gone, what's left tastes bitter.
None will improve your lot If you yourself do not.
The rain Never falls upwards. When the wound Stops hurting What hurts is The scar.
Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must change.
The rope has been torn; a knot
Can tie it again, but
It's been torn.
Perhaps we'll meet again, but
You won't find me
In the place where we parted ways.
Poverty makes you sad as well as wise.
I don't trust him. We're friends.
Terrible is the temptation to be good.
Love is the desire to give, not to receive, something. Love is the art of producing something with the other's talents.
The righteous one has no sense of humor.
Life is short and so is money.
Boy meets girl. So what?
All the gang of those who rule us Hope our quarrels never stop Helping them to split and fool us So they can remain on top.
Why be a man when you can be a success.
Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself.
The more there are suffering, then, the more natural their sufferings appear. Who wants to prevent the fishes in the sea from getting wet?
And the suffering themselves share this callousness towards themselves and are lacking in kindness towards themselves. It is terrible that human beings so easily put up with existing conditions, not only with the sufferings of strangers but also with their own.
All those who have thought about the bad state of things refuse to appeal to the compassion of one group of people for another. But the compassion of the oppressed for the oppressed is indispensable. It is the world's one hope.
Writers can't write as fast as governments make wars; because to write demands thinking.
First the grub, then the morals.
All the world says: yes we know what's written in the books but now let's see what our eyes tell us.
Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man.
Who paid the bill?
Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not.
If you join the rat race - you're in the race of rats.
He who speaks of enemies , himself is the enemy.
Suppose they gave a war, and nobody came? Why then, the war would come to you!
The headlong stream is termed violent
But the river bed hemming it in
Is termed violent by no one.
Carpenter: "Call Shen Te, someone! She's good!"
Shui Ta: "Certainly. She's ruined.
Everyone chases after happiness,
not noticing that happiness is right at their heels
I don't like where I'm going and I don't like where I've been. Why am I in a hurry?
Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.
Yes, I'm the one who washes the plates and glasses
They call me an easy woman
When they give me a penny
I still have to say thank you
Here I am, in ragged clothes
At the bottom of this shabby hotel
Today, you don't know who I am
Today, you don't know who I am
But one evening, one beautiful evening
A big commotion
People running along the shore
Saying: "Look who's coming!"
And me, I'll smile for the first time
They'll say: "You, you're smiling now?"
A big ship
A hundred cannons at the portholes
Will enter the harbour!
I'll always be washing
The glasses and plates
I'll always be an "easy woman"
When they give me a penny
I'll always say thank you
I'll keep my ragged clothes
At the bottom of this shabby hotel
And tomorrow, tomorrow like today
You'll never know who I am!
But one evening, that beautiful evening for which I live
Look how the cannons
Wake up and turn
For the first time, I'll burst out laughing
"What, brat, you have the heart to laugh?"
That big ship
A hundred cannons at the portholes
Will bombard the harbour!
Then the sailors will come to shore
More than a hundred, they'll mark with a cross of blood
Every house, every door
And it's before me that will be brought
Enchained, imploring, mutilated and bloodied
Your kind, all your kind, fi
Then I'll go on, get it off my chest. It all starts with yours truly growing up in lovely Flanders, else I'd never of seen him and wouldn't be stuck here now in Poland, cause he was an army cook, fair-haired, a Dutchman but thin for once. Kattrin, watch out for the thin ones, only in those days I didn't know that, or that he'd got a girl already, or that they all called him Puffing Piet cause he never took out his pipe out of his mouth when he was on the job, it meant that little to him.
To those who does not know the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.
Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army?
Philip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War. Who
Triumphed with him?
People who understand everything get no stories.
Righteous people have no sense of humor.
What rapture, oh, it is to know A good thing when you see it And having seen a good thing, oh, What rapture 'tis to flee it.
You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!
When the waters poured into Atlantis, the rich men still screamed for their slaves.
Old Man, right (sighing): Death to the fascists!
I want to go with the one I love.
I do not want to calculate the cost.
I do not want to think about whether it's good.
I do not want to know whether he loves me.
I want to go with whom I love ...
The fanatics for progress often have too little appreciation of the existing.
On a certain day in the blue-moon month of September
Beneath a young plum tree, quietly
I held her there, my quiet, pale beloved
In my arms just like a graceful dream.
And over us in the beautiful summer sky
There was a cloud on which my gaze rested
It was very white and so immensely high
And when I looked up, it had disappeared.
Character is a question of time. It lasts for a certain length of time, just like a glove. There are good ones that last a long time. But they don't last forever.
In my poetry a rhyme
Would seem to me almost insolent.
Inside me contend
Delight at the apple tree in blossom
And horror at the house-painter's speeches.
But only the second
Drives me to my desk.
As soon as something seems the most obvious thing in the world,it means that we have abandoned all attempts to understanding it.
Let nothing be called natural In an age of bloody confusion, Ordered disorder, planned caprice, And dehumanized humanity, lest all things Be held unalterable!
Before familiarity can turn into awareness the familiar must be stripped of its inconspicuousness; we must give up assuming that the object in question needs no explanation. However frequently recurrent, modest, vulgar it may be it will now be be labeled as something unusual.
First the pork chops, then morality
He thought in other heads, and in his own, others besides himself thought
Today every invention is received with a cry of triumph which soon turns into a cry of fear.
In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.
I'm teaching all the time. When am I to learn?
The man who laughs has simply not yet had the terrible news.
The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn't hear, doesn't speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn't know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn't know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.
When something seems 'the most obvious thing in the world' it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.
If you fight you might lose, if you don't you have already lost.
One can describe the world of today to the people of today only if one describes it as capable of alteration.
You can't write poems about trees when the woods are full of policemen.
For the villainy of the world is great, and a man has to run his legs off to keep them from being stolen out fom underneath him.
Unhappily, my wife is expecting me in connection with a fish