Bertolt Brecht Quotes

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

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.

I see with sympathy
The swollen veins on his brow, showing
How exhausting it is to be evil.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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