Bertolt Brecht Quotes - Page 3

Would it not be simpler If the Government dissolved the people and elected another?

In the contradiction lies the hope.

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.

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.

None will improve your lot If you yourself do not.

You can make a fresh start with your final breath.

I don't like where I'm going and I don't like where I've been. Why am I in a hurry?

There are times when you have to choose between being human and having good taste.

It's never too late for those whose time has come.

What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?

Never believe on faith, see for yourself! What you yourself don't learn you don't know.

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

We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.

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.

　When the leaders speak of peace 　The common folk know 　That war is coming 　When the leaders curse war 　The mobilization order is already written out. 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. 　

Come in, dear wind, and be our guest You too have neither home nor rest.

The fanatics for progress often have too little appreciation of the existing.

If you fight you might lose, if you don't you have already lost.

You can't write poems about trees when the woods are full of policemen.

Let nothing be called natural In an age of bloody confusion, Ordered disorder, planned caprice, And dehumanized humanity, lest all things Be held unalterable!

Alas,we who wanted kindness, could not be kind ourselves.

I don't trust him. We're friends.

He who is still laughing is he who hasn't heard the terrible news.

Then I will tell you something. I do not believe in it. Forty years among men has consistently taught me that they are not amenable to commonsense. Show them the red tail of a comet, fill them with black terror, and they will all come running out of their houses and break their legs. But tell them one sensible proposition, and support it with seven reasons, and they will simply laugh in your face.

Art is not a mirror. Art is a hammer.