Bertolt Brecht Quotes

129 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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
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
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.

Bertolt Brecht
One can describe the world of today to the people of today only if one describes it as capable of alteration.

Bertolt Brecht
It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater. Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him. Theater must teach all the pleasures and joys of discovery, all the feelings of triumph associated with liberation.

Bertolt Brecht
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
How long Do works endure? As long As they are not completed.

Bertolt Brecht
From the cradle to the grave, underwear first, last and all the time.

Bertolt Brecht
Mr. Wurlitzer, I am now in a position to receive your organ.

Bertolt Brecht
What is the burgling of a bank to the founding of a bank?

Bertolt Brecht
For the task assigned them
Men aren't smart enough or sly
Any rogue can blind them
With a clever lie.

Bertolt Brecht
The law is simply and solely made for the exploitation of those who do not understand it or of those who, for naked need, cannot obey it.

Bertolt Brecht
With drooping shoulders The majority sit hunched, their foreheads furrowed like Stony ground that has been repeatedly ploughed-up to no purpose.

Bertolt Brecht
Art and science work in quite different ways: agreed. But, bad as it may sound, I have to admit that I cannot get along as an artist without the use of one or two sciences.... In my view, the great and complicated things that go on in the world cannot be adequately recognized by people who do not use every possible aid to understanding.

Bertolt Brecht
Father says theologians have their bells to ring: physicists have their laughter.
Virginia speaking

Bertolt Brecht
When the leaders speak of peace, the common folk know war is coming.

Bertolt Brecht
Things take indeed a wondrous turn When learned men do stoop to learn.

Bertolt Brecht
What rapture, oh, it is to know A good thing when you see it And having seen a good thing, oh, What rapture 'tis to flee it.

Bertolt Brecht
There are some with brains and some without. It makes for a better division of labour.

Bertolt Brecht
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
The more we can squeeze out of nature by inventions and discoveries and improved organization of labour, the more uncertain our existence seems to be. It's not we who lord it over things, it seems, but things which lord it over us.

Bertolt Brecht
On thinking about Hell, I gather
My brother Shelley found it was a place
Much like the city of London. I
Who live in Los Angeles and not in London
Find, on thinking about Hell, that it must be
Still more like Los Angeles.

Bertolt Brecht
I am a playwright. I show What I have seen. In the man markets I have seen how men are traded. That I show, I, the playwright.

Bertolt Brecht
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