Top 85 Friedrich Durrenmatt Quotes
#1. What the world needs is not redemption from sin but redemption from hunger and oppression; it has no need to pin its hopes upon Heaven, it has everything to hope for from this earth.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#5. A story has been thought through to the end when it has taken the worst possible turn.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#6. We are not cave dwellers anymore, we live in the age of technology. When someone needs a car, he does not need to build it. He can buy it. When someone needs a murder, he himself does not need to kill. He can order it.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#7. Revolutions demand enormous sacrifices and, at the same time, create a new need to change the world again.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#8. There is no greater cruelty than a genius stumbling over something idiotic.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#10. The worst possible turn can not be programmed. It is caused by coincidence.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#11. The world is bad but not without hope. It is only hopeless when you look at it from an ideal viewpoint.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#12. Then the American flag was saluted. In general, in the United States people always salute the American flag.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#19. That there is also freedom in captivity, only a prisoner can claim. Coming from a prison guard, this statement would be blasphemy.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#21. I am a man, and God is hiding from us humans. We are unable to see Him, we can only search for Him.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#22. Before anything else, we need a new age of Enlightenment. Our present political systems must relinquish their claims on truth, justice and freedom and have to replace them with the search for truth, justice, freedom and reason.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#25. So then learn to conquer your fear. This is the only art we have to master nowadays: to look at things without fear, and to fearlessly do right.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#26. The planet on which we live is poorly organized, many areas are overpopulated, others are reserved for a few, technology's potential is only in part realized, and most people are starving.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#29. It is surely easier to confess a murder over a cup of coffee than in front of a jury.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#31. Rome has betrayed itself. It knew the truth and chose violence, it knew humaneness and it chose tyranny.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#34. For people who have no critical acumen, a state is a mythical entity, for those who think critically it is a rational fiction, created by man in order to facilitate human coexistence.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#35. Everything that is necessary is also easy. You just have to accept it. And the most necessary, the most natural matter on this planet is death.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#36. Today's Communism can survive only if it abandons the myth of an infallible party, if it continues to think, and if it becomes democratic.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#38. We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#39. The content of physics is the concern of physicists, its effect the concern of all men.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#42. To make the essence of man visible in the exposure is the highest art of photography.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#44. The evolution of humans can not only be seen as the grand total of their wars; it is also defined by the evolution of the human mind and the development of the human consciousness.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#47. A story has been thought to its conclusion when it has taken its worst possible turn.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#48. Communism is a proposition to structure the world more reasonably, a proposition for changing the world. As such, we have to analyze it and, if we deem it reasonable, act upon it.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#49. In the United States the whites speak well of the Blacks but think bad about them, whereas the Blacks talk bad and think bad aboutthe whites. Whites fear Blacks, because they have a bad conscience, and Blacks hate whites because they need not have a bad conscience.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#56. A major power can afford a military debacle only when it looks like a political victory.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#58. Today's difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#59. There are risks which are not acceptable: the destruction of humanity is one of them.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#60. Humans need justice in the here and now and grace in the thereafter. Justice in the here and now is possible only without freedom,and grace in the thereafter only through the freedom of God.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#61. The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#65. Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#66. Everything in the world can be changed, my dear Florestan, but the human being.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#68. Above all, be suspicious of your fatherland. Nobody is more inclined to become a murderer than a fatherland.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#72. Prior to the meeting, there was a prayer. In general, in the United States there was always praying.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#73. The difference between humans and wild animals is that humans pray before they commit murder.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#75. The individual protests against the world, but he doesn't get beyond protest, he is just a single protester. When he wants to be more than that, he has to counter power with power, he has to oppose the system with another system.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#76. Whoever is content with the world, and who profits from its lack of justice, does not want to change it.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#77. As the Americans slaughter millions of turkeys every year for the celebration of their deliverance, the Indians, who should be celebrated as saviors, have long been slaughtered. There was even a time when a white man was paid a very decent price for every Indian scalp he could produce.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#79. News reports don't change the world. Only facts change it, and those have already happened when we get the news.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#80. Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#83. There is a moment when nothing can be wiped out and left behind any more, when there is only reality and reality is horrifying.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
#84. It is bad luck for world history that of all people the Russians adopted Communism, because they are totally unfit for it.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
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