Kathe Kollwitz Quotes

It is my duty to voice the sufferings of humankind, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain high. This is my task, but it is not an easy one to fulfill.

I was put in this world to change it.

Every war carries within it the war which will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything, everything is smashed.

While I drew, and wept along with the terrified children I was drawing, I really felt the burden I am bearing. I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate.

Look at life with the eyes of a child.

I can always paint very well with my eyes, but with my hands it doesn't always work out.

I do not want to die... until I have faithfully made the most of my talent and cultivated the seed that was placed in me, until the last small twig has grown.

I have never been able to carry out any work coolly. On the contrary it is done, so to speak, with my own blood. Anyone who looks at my works must be able to sense that.

One day, a new ideal will arise, and there will be an end to all wars. I die convinced of this. It will need much hard work, but it will be achieved… The important thing, until that happens, is to hold one's banner high and to struggle… Without struggle there is no life.

I am in the world to change the world.

Old ideas die hard. We've had thousands of years of women having almost no rights. Parts of the world are in a struggle toward very basic human rights for women, and most of the world isn't even there yet. And it's going to take a long time to change these attitudes.

There are moments on most days when I feel a deep and sincere gratitude, when I sit at the open window, and there is a blue sky or moving clouds.

Where do all the women who have watched so carefully over the lives of their beloved ones get the heroism to send them to face the cannon?

My work is not, of course, pure art in the sense that Schmidt-Rottluff's is, but it is art nonetheless... It is all right with me that my work serves a purpose. I want to have an effect on my time, in which human beings are so confused and in need of help.

I thought I was a revolutionary and was only an evolutionary.

If all the people who have been hurt by the war were to exclude joy from their lives, it would almost be as if they had died.

It seems to me nowadays that the most important task for someone who is aging is to spread love and warmth whenever possible.

There must be understanding between the artist and the people. In the best ages of art that has always been the case. Genius can probably run on ahead and seek out new ways. But the good artists who follow after genius — and I count myself among these — have to restore the lost connection once more.

I am afraid of dying-but being dead, oh yes, that to me is often an appealing prospect.

I have received a commission to make a poster against war. That is a task that makes me happy. Some may say a thousand times that this is not pure art.... but as long as I can work, I want to be effective with my art.

When Michelangelo was an old man, he drew himself sitting in a child's pushcart.

No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes.

Culture arises only when the individual fulfills his cycle of obligations. If everyone recognizes and fulfills his cycle of obligations, genuineness emerges. The culture of a whole nation can in the final analysis be built upon nothing else.

Pacifism simply is not a matter of calm looking on; it is work, hard work.

Recently I began reading my old diaries. Back to before the war. Gradually I became very depressed. The reason for that is probably that I wrote only when there were obstacles and halts to the flow of life, seldom when everything was smooth and even. ... As I read I distinctly felt what a half-truth a diary presents.