Peter Weiss Quotes

We can say what we like without favour or fear and what we can't say we can breathe in your ear

We're all so clogged with dead ideas passed from generation to generation that even the best of us don't know the way out.

What has gone wrong with the men who are ruling I'd like to know who they think they are fooling They told us that torture was over and gone but everyone knows the same torture goes on

In Dante the hero would rather flee and renounce the tempting embrace instead of yielding to his desires and enduring the attendant dangers.

Long ago I left heroics to the heroes

Once we thought a few hundred corpses would be enough then we saw thousands were still too few and today we can't even count all the dead Everywhere you look.

Charlotte Corday walked alone Paris birds sang sugar calls Charlotte walked down lanes of stone through the haze of perfume stalls Charlotte smelt the dead's gangrene Heard the singing guillotine

Don't soil your pretty little shoes The gutter's deep and red Climb up climb up and ride along with me the tumbrel driver said But she never said a word never turned her head Don't soil your pretty little pants I only go one way Climb up climb up and ride along with me There's no gold coach today But she never said a word never turned her head

With the plundered people transferring their energies into relaxed and receptive thoughts, degradation and lust for power produced art.

Don't be taken in when they pat you paternally on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason for fighting. Because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretense of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons rapidly developed by servile scientists will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you into pieces.

We're all free and equal to die like dogs

And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice and they turned their faces away and said, 'Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world. Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage. The soul lives on humility and patience,' at the same time screwing the poor from their last centime. They settled down among their treasures and ate and drank with princes and to the starving they said, 'Suffer. Suffer as he suffered on the cross for it is the will of God.'

And anyone believes what they hear over and over again, so the poor instead of bread made do with a picture of the bleeding, scourged, and nailed-up Christ and prayed to that image of their helplessness. And the priests said, 'Raise your hands to heaven and bend your knees and bear your suffering without complaint. Pray for those that torture you, for prayer and blessing are the only stairways which you can climb to paradise.'

And so they chained down the poor in their ignorance so that they wouldn't stand up and fight their bosses who ruled in the name of the lie of divine right.

I could buy myself paper, a pen, a pencil and a brush and could create pictures whenever and wherever I wanted ... That evening, in the spring of 1947, on the embankment of the Seine in Paris, at the age of thirty, I saw that it was possible to live and work in the world, and that I could participate in the exchange of ideas that was taking place all around, bound to no country.

Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out. Niether side is glorious. On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing - not to lie under theearth, but to walk upon it - without crutches.

What's the point of a revolution
without general
copulation copulation copulation

What kind of town is this
What sort of streets are these
Who invented this
who profits by it
I saw peddlers
at every corner
they're selling little guillotines
with tiny sharp blades
and dolls filled with red liquid
which spurts fro the neck
when the sentence is carried out.
What kind of children are these
who can play
with this toys so efficiently
and who is judging

However hard we try to bring in the new; it comes into being only in the midst of clumsy deals.

The only truths we can point to are the ever-changing truths of our own experience.

Woe to the man who tries to stretch the imagination of man He shall be mocked he shall be scourged by the blinkered guardians of morality.

Something unfathomable lies behind every thought ... something for which there aren't any words.

Fight on land and sea All men want to be free If they don't never mind we'll abolish all mankind