Friedrich Durrenmatt Quotes - Page 2

The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said.

Today's difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal.

He who confronts the paradoxical exposes himself to reality.

To not be afraid in our world is the message that doesn't derive from reason, but maybe from this mysterious capacity given to humans which we call--not without a little embarrassment--faith.

The only remedy against hunger is reasonable birth control.

In a society which is structured the wrong way, piety has no effect.

What the world needs is not redemption from sin but redemption from hunger and oppression; it has no need to pin its hopes upon Heaven, it has everything to hope for from this earth.

Every work of art depicts an aspect of reality.

Man is imperfect. The reality he creates is always endangered by man.

We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior.

It is inhuman to continue a war which could easily be ended

We are not cave dwellers anymore, we live in the age of technology. When someone needs a car, he does not need to build it. He can buy it. When someone needs a murder, he himself does not need to kill. He can order it.

What concerns everyone can only be resolved by everyone.

The rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual.

The savages don't have atom bombs.

Before anything else, we need a new age of Enlightenment. Our present political systems must relinquish their claims on truth, justice and freedom and have to replace them with the search for truth, justice, freedom and reason.

One does not set fire to a world which is already lost

The worst possible turn can not be programmed. It is caused by coincidence.

A story is not finished, until it took the worst turn.

That there is also freedom in captivity, only a prisoner can claim. Coming from a prison guard, this statement would be blasphemy.

Resistance at all cost is the most senseless act there is.

It is bad luck for world history that of all people the Russians adopted Communism, because they are totally unfit for it.

Communism is a proposition to structure the world more reasonably, a proposition for changing the world. As such, we have to analyze it and, if we deem it reasonable, act upon it.

For a person who is dying only eternity counts.

Power is paradoxical.