Bertolt Brecht Quotes

German poet, playwright, and theatre director (1898–1956)

Add quote

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), commonly known as Bertolt Brecht, was a German Marxist dramatist, stage director and poet. He is remembered for the Distancing effect practice in performing arts (known in German as Verfremdungseffekt or V-Effekt).

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pen Names: Berthold Larsen

Alternative Names: Berŭtʻoltʻŭ Bŭrehitʻŭ • Pertōl Pirekcṭ • Mpertolt Mprecht • Pu-lai-hsi-tʻe • Pertōlṭ Pirekcṭ • Perṭōlṭ Pireṣṭ • Bertolt Breht • Bert Brecht • Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht • Bertholt Brecht • Bertolʹd Brekht • Bertolʹt Brekht • Bertold Brecht • Bŭrehitʻŭ • Pei-tʻo-erh-tʻe Pu-lai-hsi-tʻe

From Wikidata (CC0)

Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.

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

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.

All the gang of those who rule us
Hope our quarrels never stop
Helping them to split and fool us
So they can remain on top.

Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the running to spread the truth among such persons.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Wie lange
Dauern die Werke? So lange
Als bis sie fertig sind.

This is the year which people will talk about
This is the year which people will be silent about.<p>The old see the young die.
The foolish see the wise die.<p>The earth no longer produces, it devours.
The sky hurls down no rain, only iron.

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.

Art is not a mirror held up to reality
but a hammer with which to shape it.

Unless an actor is satisfied to be a parrot or a monkey he must master our period's knowledge of human social life by himself joining the war of the classes. Some people may feel this is degrading, because they rank art, once the money side has been settled, as one of the highest things; but mankind's highest decisions are in fact fought out on earth, not in the heavens; in the 'external world', not inside people's heads. Nobody can stand above the warring classes, for nobody can stand above the human race. Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring classes. Thus for art to be 'unpolitical' means only to ally itself with the 'ruling' group.