Top 100 Bertolt Quotes
#1. I refuse to give readers an uplifting faux experience engineered to comfort them and perpetuate the sociopolitical and economic status quo."
"Who died and made you Bertolt Brecht?
Chuck Palahniuk
#2. Bertolt Brecht's observation in The Threepenny Opera that eating takes precedence over morality. Emerging
Satyajit Das
#4. He remembered Bertolt Brecht: I would also like to be wise. In the old books it says what wisdom is: To shun the strife of the world and to live out Your brief time without fear All this I cannot do.
Madeleine Thien
#5. Art is not a mirror held up to society but a hammer with which to shape it.
Bertolt Brecht
#6. You who will emerge from the flood
In which we have gone under
Remember
When you speak of our failings
The dark time too
Which you have escaped
Bertolt Brecht
#8. You don't need to pray to God any more when there are storms in the sky, but you do have to be insured.
Bertolt Brecht
#9. The rain Never falls upwards. When the wound Stops hurting What hurts is The scar.
Bertolt Brecht
#10. That cloud, however, blossomed just for minutes
And when I gazed up, faded in the wind.
Bertolt Brecht
#11. Great sport begins at a point where it has ceased to be healthy.
Bertolt Brecht
#12. A man who doesn't know the truth is just an idiot, but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook.
Bertolt Brecht
#13. Unhappiness doesn't grow on the chest like leprosy. Poverty won't fall off the roof like a loose tile, no; poverty and unhappiness are man's doing.
Bertolt Brecht
#14. If you join the rat race - you're in the race of rats.
Bertolt Brecht
#15. Never believe on faith, see for yourself! What you yourself don't learn you don't know.
Bertolt Brecht
#16. If you fight you might lose, if you don't you have already lost.
Bertolt Brecht
#18. Those who are weak don't fight.
Those who are stronger might fight
for an hour.
Those who are stronger still might fight
for many years.
The strongest fight
their whole life.
They are the indispensable ones.
Bertolt Brecht
#19. Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not.
Bertolt Brecht
#20. Carpenter: "Call Shen Te, someone! She's good!"
Shui Ta: "Certainly. She's ruined.
Bertolt Brecht
#21. Spring is noticed, if at all By people sitting in railway trains.
Bertolt Brecht
#22. It's never too late for those whose time has come.
Bertolt Brecht
#23. Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.
Bertolt Brecht
#25. Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero!
No, Andrea ... unhappy is the land that needs a hero.
Bertolt Brecht
#26. 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.
Bertolt Brecht
#27. Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man.
Who paid the bill?
Bertolt Brecht
#28. Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.
Bertolt Brecht
#29. Telling me there's no difference between the moon and the Earth?
Bertolt Brecht
#30. When the house of a great one collapses Many little ones are slain.
Bertolt Brecht
#31. He who is still laughing is he who hasn't heard the terrible news.
Bertolt Brecht
#32. NEPHEW: One cannot be arraigned for declaring a war, which every ruler has to do once in a while, but only for running a war badly.
Bertolt Brecht
#33. What kind of times are these, when
To talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?
Bertolt Brecht
#34. Here today we huddle tight As the darkest heathens might The snow falls chilly on our skin The snow is forcing its way in. Hush, snow, come in with us to dwell: We were thrown out by Heaven as well.
Bertolt Brecht
#35. When something seems 'the most obvious thing in the world' it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.
Bertolt Brecht
#37. The storm that bends the birch trees Is held to be violent But how about the storm That bends the backs of the roadworkers?
Bertolt Brecht
#38. Sometimes I have visions of myself driving through hell, selling sulphur and brimstone, or through heaven peddling refreshments to the roaming souls. If me and the children I've got left could find a place where there's no shooting, I wouldn't mind a few years of peace and quiet.
Bertolt Brecht
#39. 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.
Bertolt Brecht
#41. Those against politics are in favor of the politics inflicted upon them.
Bertolt Brecht
#42. What's breaking into a bank compared with founding a bank?
Bertolt Brecht
#43. 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.
Bertolt Brecht
#44. Such a lot is won when even a single man gets to his feet and says No
Bertolt Brecht
#45. People who fight may lose. People who do not fight have already lost.
Bertolt Brecht
#46. For the wickedness of the world is so great you have to run your legs off in order to avoid having them stolen from under you.
Bertolt Brecht
#47. Whenever there are great virtues, it's a sure sign something's wrong.
Bertolt Brecht
#48. The fanatics for progress often have too little appreciation of the existing.
Bertolt Brecht
#49. I hope I can pull the wagon by myself. Yes, I'll manage, there's not much in it now. I must get back into business.
Bertolt Brecht
#50. Who built the seven gates of Thebes? In the books are listed the names of kings. Did the kings heave up the building blocks?
Bertolt Brecht
#53. The mill wheel turns, it turns forever, though what is uppermost remains not so.
Bertolt Brecht
#54. Everyone chases after happiness,
not noticing that happiness is right at their heels
Bertolt Brecht
#56. It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk.
Bertolt Brecht
#57. 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.
Bertolt Brecht
#58. In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.
Bertolt Brecht
#59. The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.
Bertolt Brecht
#60. Science knows only one commandment - contribute to science.
Bertolt Brecht
#61. You have to attack once the truth is too weak to defend itself.
Bertolt Brecht
#64. The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.
Bertolt Brecht
#65. and you i beg make not your anger manifest. For all that lives needs help from all the rest.
Bertolt Brecht
#66. From the start it has been the theatre's business to entertain people ... it needs no other passport than fun.
Bertolt Brecht
#68. Who does Not Know the Truth, is simply a Fool ... Yet who Knows the Truth and Calls it a Lie, is a Criminal.
Bertolt Brecht
#69. Let nothing be called natural In an age of bloody confusion, Ordered disorder, planned caprice, And dehumanized humanity, lest all things Be held unalterable!
Bertolt Brecht
#72. Though the rich of this earth find no difficulty in creating misery, they can't bear to see it.
Bertolt Brecht
#73. Girl Tractorist: As the poet Mayakovsky said: "The home of the Soviet people shall be the home of Reason"!
Bertolt Brecht
#74. We're not responsible, he thought. This planet is a temporary affair. It's whizzing with all kinds of other ones, a whole range of planetary stuff, toward a star in the Milky Way. On that kind of a planet we're not responsible, he thought.
Bertolt Brecht
#75. People remain what they are even if their faces fall apart.
Bertolt Brecht
#76. No one will improve your lot if you do not yourself.
Bertolt Brecht
#77. A person is really dead only when nobody thinks of him anymore.
Bertolt Brecht
#80. To those who does not know the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.
Bertolt Brecht
#81. I don't like where I'm going and I don't like where I've been. Why am I in a hurry?
Bertolt Brecht
#82. Every day, to earn my daily bread I go to the market where lies are bought Hopefully I take up my place among the sellers.
Bertolt Brecht
#83. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.
Bertolt Brecht
#84. People are too durable, that's their main trouble. They can do too much to themselves, they last too long.
Bertolt Brecht
#85. You can make a fresh start with your final breath.
Bertolt Brecht
#87. 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? ...
Bertolt Brecht
#88. 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.
Bertolt Brecht
#89. Who has good luck is good, Who has bad luck is bad.
Bertolt Brecht
#90. The defeats and victories of the fellows at the top aren't always defeats and victories for the fellows at the bottom.
Bertolt Brecht
#91. Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must change.
Bertolt Brecht
#93. Sin is what is new, strong, surprising, strange. The theatre must take an interest in sin if the young are to be able to go there.
Bertolt Brecht
#94. When the Chinese Wall was built, where'd the masons go for lunch? When Caesar conquered Gaul, was there not even a cook in the army? When the Armada sank, King Philip wept. Were there no other tears?
Bertolt Brecht
#96. Four generals
Set our for Iran.
With the first one, war did not agree.
The second never won a victory.
For the third the weather never was right.
For the fourth the men would never fight.
Four generals
And not a single man!
Bertolt Brecht
#98. 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?
Bertolt Brecht
#99. Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
Bertolt Brecht
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
