Bertolt Brecht

"Oh the harsh snarl of guitar strings roaring! Heavenly distensions of our throats! Trousers stiff with dirt and love! Such whoring! Long green slimy nights: we were like stoats."

"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. (Weil die Dinge sind, wie sie sind, werden die Dinge nicht so bleiben wie sie sind.)"

"And when she was finished they laid her in earth Flowers growing, butterflies juggling over her... She, so light, barely pressed the earth down How much pain it took to make her as light as that!"

"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."

"If art reflects life, it does so with special mirrors."

"Firebugs dragging their gasoline bottles Are approaching the Academy of Arts, with a grin. And so, instead of embracing them, Let us demand the freedom of the elbow To knock the bottles out of their filthy hands. Even the most blockheaded bureaucrat, Provided he loves peace, Is a greater lover of the arts Than any so-called art-lover Who loves the arts of war."

"Will der Schauspieler nicht Papagei oder Affe sein, muß er sich das Wissen der Zeit über das menschliche Zusammenleben aneignen, indem er die Kämpfe der Klassen mitkämpft. Dies mag manchem wie eine Erniedrigung vorkommen, da er die Kunst, ist die Bezahlung geregelt, in die höchsten Sphären versetzt; aber die höchsten Entscheidungen für das Menschengeschlecht werden auf der Erde ausgekämpft, nicht in den Lüften; im »Äußern«, nicht in den Köpfen. Über den kämpfenden Klassen kann niemand stehen, da niemand über den Menschen stehen kann. Die Gesellschaft hat kein gemeinsames Sprachrohr, solange sie in kämpfende Klassen gespalten ist. So heißt unparteiisch sein für die Kunst nur: zur herrschenden Partei gehören."

"Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not."

"Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions."

"We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself."

"The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set some limit on infinite error."

"Sometimes I have visions of myself driving through hell, selling sulphur and brimstone, or through heaven peddling refreshments to the roaming souls. If me and the children I've got left could find a place where there's no shooting, I wouldn't mind a few years of peace and quiet."

"War is like love, it always finds a way."

"Art and science coincide insofar as both aim to improve the lives of men and women. The latter normally concerns itself with profit, the former with pleasure. In the coming age, art will fashion our entertainment out of new means of productivity in ways that will simultaneously enhance our profit and maximize our pleasure."

"Science has only one commandment: contribution."

"Bezeig du Interesse an ihrer Güte, denn keiner kann lang gut sein, wenn nicht Güte verlangt wird."

"Komm, geh mit angeln, sagte der Fischer zum Wurm."

"Engel verführt man gar nicht oder schnell. Verzieh ihn einfach in den Hauseingang Steck ihm die Zunge in den Mund und lang Ihm untern Rock, bis er sich naß macht, stell Ihm das Gesicht zur Wand, heb ihm den Rock Und fick ihn. Stöhnt er irgendwie beklommen Dann halt ihn fest und laß ihn zweimal kommen Sonst hat er dir am Ende einen Schock. Ermahn ihn, dass er gut den Hintern schwenkt Heiß ihn dir ruhig an die Hoden fassen Sag ihm, er darf sich furchtlos fallen lassen Dieweil er zwischen Erd und Himmel hängt – Doch schau ihm nicht beim Ficken ins Gesicht Und seine Flügel, Mensch, zerdrück sie nicht."

"What they could do with round here is a good war. What else can you expect with peace running wild all over the place? You know what the trouble with peace is? No organization."

"A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls."

"The main objective is to learn to think crudely. Crude thinking is the great one's thinking."

"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!"

"The theater-goer in conventional dramatic theater says: Yes, I've felt that way, too. That's the way I am. That's life. That's the way it will always be. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is no escape for him. That's great art — Everything is self-evident. I am made to cry with those who cry, and laugh with those who laugh. But the theater-goer in the epic theater says: I would never have thought that. You can't do that. That's very strange, practically unbelievable. That has to stop. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is an escape for him. That's great art — nothing is self-evident. I am made to laugh about those who cry, and cry about those who laugh."

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

"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."

"Those who lead the country into the abyss Call ruling too difficult For ordinary men."

"First comes a full stomach, then comes ethics."

"And the shark he has his teeth and There they are for all to see And Macheath he has his knife but No one knows where it may be."

"My business is too difficult. My business is trying to arouse human pity. There are few things that'll move people to pity, a few, but the trouble is when they've been used several times, they no longer work. So it happens, for instance, that a man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time that 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 hand him over cold-bloodedly to the police."

"You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!"

"For once you must try not to shirk the facts: Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts."

"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."

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

"What is the burgling of a bank to the founding of a bank?"

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

"Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life."

"You don't need to pray to God any more when there are storms in the sky, but you do have to be insured."

"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."

"Ah, what an age it is When to speak of trees is almost a crime For it is a kind of silence about injustice!"

"Always the victor writes the history of the vanquished. He who beats distorts the faces of the beaten. The weaker depart from this world and the lies remain."

"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."

"To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated."

"Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably."

"Mitfühlend sehe ich Die geschwollenen Stirnadern, andeutend Wie anstrengend es ist, böse zu sein."

"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."

"The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot."

"Some party hack decreed that the people had lost the government's confidence and could only regain it with redoubled effort. If that is the case, would it not be simpler, If the government simply dissolved the people And elected another?"

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

"Andrea: Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero. Galileo: No, Andrea: Unhappy is the land that needs a hero. [Unglücklich das Land, das Helden nötig hat.]"

"Marie Farrar: month of birth, April Died in the Meissen penitentiary An unwed mother, judged by the law, she will Show you how all that lives, lives frailly. You who bear your sons in laundered linen sheets And call your pregnancies a "blessed" state Should never damn the outcast and the weak: Her sin was heavy, but her suffering great. Therefore, I beg, make not your anger manifest For all that lives needs help from all the rest."