Kathe Kollwitz Quotes

I want to cultivate the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown.

No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes.

The development of the national spirit in its present form leads into blind alleys. Some condition must be found which preserves the life of the nation, but rules out the fatal rivalry among nations.

My work is not, of course, pure art in the sense that Schmidt-Rottluff's is, but it is art nonetheless ... It is all right with me that my work serves a purpose. I want to have an effect on my time, in which human beings are so confused and in need of help.

To this day I do not know whether the power which has inspired my works is something related to religion, or is indeed religion itself.

I thought I was a revolutionary and was only an evolutionary.

I can always paint very well with my eyes, but with my hands it doesn't always work out.

I was put in this world to change it.

Genius can probably run on ahead and seek out new ways. But the good artists who follow after genius - and I count myself among these - have to restore the lost connection once more.

It is my duty to voice the suffering of men, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain-high.

It is my duty to voice the sufferings of humankind, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain high. This is my task, but it is not an easy one to fulfill.

Growing old is partly an inescapable process of accommodation and adjustment.

If all the people who have been hurt by the war were to exclude joy from their lives, it would almost be as if they had died.

I am afraid of dying-but being dead, oh yes, that to me is often an appealing prospect.

For me the Koenigsberg longshoremen had beauty; the Polish jimkes on their grain ships had beauty; the broad freedom of movement in the gestures of the common people had beauty. Middle-class people held no appeal for me at all.

How long were the stretches of toilsome tacking back and forth, of being blocked, of being thrown back again and again. But all that was annulled by the periods when I had my technique in hand and succeeded in doing what I wanted.

Look at life with the eyes of a child.

Men without joy seem like corpses.

Recently I began reading my old diaries. Back to before the war. Gradually I became very depressed. The reason for that is probably that I wrote only when there were obstacles and halts to the flow of life, seldom when everything was smooth and even ... As I read I distinctly felt what a half-truth a diary presents.

One day, a new ideal will arise, and there will be an end to all wars. I die convinced of this. It will need much hard work, but it will be achieved... The important thing, until that happens, is to hold one's banner high and to struggle... Without struggle there is no life.

Where do all the women who have watched so carefully over the lives of their beloved ones get the heroism to send them to face the cannon?

There are moments on most days when I feel a deep and sincere gratitude, when I sit at the open window, and there is a blue sky or moving clouds.