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Bertolt Brecht Quotes
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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
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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
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To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated.
Bertolt Brecht
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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
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The plum tree in the yard's so small
It's hardly like a tree at all.
Yet there it is, railed round
To keep it safe and sound. The poor thing can't grow any more
Though if it could it would for sure.
There's nothing to be done
It gets too little sun.
Bertolt Brecht
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Worship with fulness of heart the weak memory of heaven!
It cannot trace
Either your name or your face
Nobody knows you're still living.
Bertolt Brecht
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Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?…
Where, the evening that the wall of China was finished
Did the masons go?
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. General, your bomber is powerful. It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant. But it has one defect: It needs a mechanic. General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think.
Bertolt Brecht
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All the gang of those who rule us
Hope our quarrels never stop
Helping them to split and fool us
So they can remain on top.
Bertolt Brecht
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Don't tell me peace has broken out, when I've just bought fresh supplies.
Bertolt Brecht
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A man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time he'll give him sixpence. But the second time it'll only be a threepenny bit. And if he sees him a third time, he'll have him cold-bloodedly handed over to the police.
Bertolt Brecht
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What a miserable thing life is: you're living in clover, only the clover isn't good enough.
Bertolt Brecht
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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
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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
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You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy
But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!
Bertolt Brecht
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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
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The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn
When teachers themselves are taught to learn.
Bertolt Brecht
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People remain what they are even if their faces fall apart.
Bertolt Brecht
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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
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Show interest in her goodness, for no one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand.
Bertolt Brecht
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The mill wheel turns, it turns forever, though what is uppermost remains not so.
Bertolt Brecht
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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
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The war which is coming Is not the first one. There were Other wars before it. When the last one came to an end There were conquerors and conquered. Among the conquered the common people Starved. Among the conquerors The common people starved too.
Bertolt Brecht
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Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
Bertolt Brecht
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One can describe the world of today to the people of today only if one describes it as capable of alteration.
Bertolt Brecht
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Quote of the day
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
Robert F. Kennedy
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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