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Bertolt Brecht Quotes
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Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not.
Bertolt Brecht
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The camera is just as capable of lying as the typewriter.
Bertolt Brecht
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What they could do with round here is a good war. What else can you expect with peace running wild all over the place? You know what the trouble with peace is? No organization.
Bertolt Brecht
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Truly, I live in dark times!
The guileless word is folly. A smooth forehead
Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs
Has simply not yet had
The terrible news.
Bertolt Brecht
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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
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The theater-goer in conventional dramatic theater says: Yes, I've felt that way, too. That's the way I am. That's life. That's the way it will always be. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is no escape for him. That's great art — Everything is self-evident. I am made to cry with those who cry, and laugh with those who laugh. But the theater-goer in the epic theater says: I would never have thought that. You can't do that. That's very strange, practically unbelievable. That has to stop. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is an escape for him. That's great art — nothing is self-evident. I am made to laugh about those who cry, and cry about those who laugh.
Bertolt Brecht
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Their peace and their war
Are like wind and storm. War grows from their peace.
Bertolt Brecht
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Without trampling down twelve others
You cannot help one poor man.
Bertolt Brecht
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Spring is noticed, if at all
By people sitting in railway trains.
Bertolt Brecht
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Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.
Bertolt Brecht
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Go make yourself a plan And be a shining light. Then make yourself a second plan, For neither will come right.
Bertolt Brecht
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Berlin, an etching by Churchill, after an idea by Hitler.
Bertolt Brecht
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The finest plans have always been spoiled by the littleness of them that should carry them out. Even emperors can't do it all by themselves.
Bertolt Brecht
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The finest plans are always ruined by the littleness of those who ought to carry them out, for the Emperors can actually do nothing.
Bertolt Brecht
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General, your tank
is a powerful vehicle
it smashes down forests
and crushes a hundred men.
but it has one defect:
it needs a driver.
Bertolt Brecht
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And I always thought: the very simplest words
Must be enough. When I say what things are like
Everyone's heart must be torn to shreds.
That you'll go down if you don't stand up for yourself
Surely you see that.
Bertolt Brecht
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Though the rich of this earth find no difficulty in creating misery, they can't bear to see it.
Bertolt Brecht
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The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set some limit on infinite error.
Bertolt Brecht
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And the shark he has his teeth and
There they are for all to see
And Macheath he has his knife but
No one knows where it may be.
Bertolt Brecht
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Some party hack decreed that the people
had lost the government's confidence
and could only regain it with redoubled effort.
If that is the case, would it not be simpler,
If the government simply dissolved the people
And elected another?
Bertolt Brecht
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On golden chairs
Sitting at ease, you paid for the songs which we chanted
To those less lucky. You paid us for drying their tears
And for comforting all those whom you had wounded.
Bertolt Brecht
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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
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Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.
Bertolt Brecht
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One observes, they have gone too long without a war here. Where is morality to come from in such a case, I ask? Peace is nothing but slovenliness, only war creates order.
Bertolt Brecht
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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
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Quote of the day
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Bertolt Brecht
Creative Commons
Born:
February 10, 1898
Died:
August 14, 1956
(aged 58)
Bio:
Eugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director of the 20th century.
Known for:
The Threepenny Opera (1955)
Mother Courage and Her Children (1941)
The Good Person of Szechwan (1943)
Life of Galileo (1940)
The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1948)
Most used words:
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