Bertolt Brecht Quotes

128 Sourced Quotes

Science knows only one commandment – contribute to science.

Bertolt Brecht
Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.

Bertolt Brecht
What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?

Bertolt Brecht
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
Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.

Bertolt Brecht
Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.

Bertolt Brecht
People are too durable, that's their main trouble. They can do too much to themselves, they last too long.

Bertolt Brecht
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
Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.

Bertolt Brecht
What kind of times are they, when A talk about trees is almost a crime Because it implies silence about so many horrors?

Bertolt Brecht
The mill wheel turns, it turns forever, though what is uppermost remains not so.

Bertolt Brecht
Show interest in her goodness, for no one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand.

Bertolt Brecht
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
People remain what they are even if their faces fall apart.

Bertolt Brecht
The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn
When teachers themselves are taught to learn.

Bertolt Brecht
Do not treat me in this fashion. Don't leave me out. Have I not
Always spoken the truth in my books? And now
You treat me like a liar! I order you:
Burn me!
Those who lead the country into the abyss
Call ruling too difficult
For ordinary men.
Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!

Bertolt Brecht
You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy
But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!

Bertolt Brecht
Of all the works of man I like best
Those which have been used.
The copper pots with their dents and flattened edges
The knives and forks whose wooden handles
Have been worn away by many hands: such forms
Seemed to me the noblest.

Bertolt Brecht
The human race…tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds however leave scars.

Bertolt Brecht
What a miserable thing life is: you're living in clover, only the clover isn't good enough.

Bertolt Brecht
Art and science coincide insofar as both aim to improve the lives of men and women. The latter normally concerns itself with profit, the former with pleasure. In the coming age, art will fashion our entertainment out of new means of productivity in ways that will simultaneously enhance our profit and maximize our pleasure.

Bertolt Brecht
To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated.

Bertolt Brecht
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.

Bertolt Brecht
When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!" When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.

Bertolt Brecht
Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.

Bertolt Brecht