Peter Weiss Quotes

And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice
and they turned away their faces and said
Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world
Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage
The soul lives on humility and patience
at the same time screwing from the poor their last centime
They settled down among their treasures
and ate and drank with princes
and to the starving they said
Suffer
Suffer as he suffered on the cross
for it is the will of God

Against Nature's silence I use action
In the vast indifference I invent a meaning
I don't watch unmoved I intervene
and say that this and this are wrong
and I work to alter them and improve them
The important thing
is to pull yourself up by your own hair
to turn yourself inside out
and see the whole world with fresh eyes

Every death even the cruellest death
drowns in the total indifference of Nature
Nature herself would watch unmoved
if we destroyed the entire human race
I hate Nature
this passionless spectator this unbreakable iceberg-face
that can bear everything
this goads us to greater and greater acts

Don't soil your pretty little shoes
The gutter's deep and red
Climb up climb up and ride along with me
the tumbrel driver said But she never said a word
never turned her head Don't soil your pretty little pants
I only go one way
Climb up climb up and ride along with me
There's no gold coach today But she never said a word
never turned her head

Charlotte Corday walked alone
Paris birds sang sugar calls
Charlotte walked down lanes of stone
through the haze of perfume stalls
Charlotte smelt the dead's gangrene
Heard the singing guillotine

We've got rights the right to starve
We've got jobs waiting for work
We're all brothers lousy and dirty
We're all free and equal to die like dogs

Only in his poetry did he have the courage to love.

In Dante the hero would rather flee and renounce the tempting embrace instead of yielding to his desires and enduring the attendant dangers.

I could buy myself paper, a pen, a pencil and a brush and could create pictures whenever and wherever I wanted. … That evening, in the spring of 1947, on the embankment of the Seine in Paris, at the age of thirty, I saw that it was possible to live and work in the world, and that I could participate in the exchange of ideas that was taking place all around, bound to no country.

Inseparable from economic advantage was the superiority of knowledge. Ownership involved greed, and the advantaged tried as long as possible to block the road to education for the have-nots. The privileges of the ruling class could not be eliminated until we gained insight into the conditions and acquired fundamental knowledge. We kept getting repulsed over and over because our ability to think, to deduce, and conclude was insufficiently developed. This state of affairs began changing with the realization that the upper classes essentially opposed our thirst for knowledge. Ever since, our most important goal was to conquer an education, a skill. In every field of research, by using any means, cunning and strength of mind. From the very outset, our studying was rebellion.

Chorus:
The Kings are our dear fathers
Under whose care we live in peace
The Kings are our dear fathers
Under whose care we live in peace
Marat:
And the children repeated the lesson they believed it
As anyone believes
What they hear over and over again
And over and over again the priests said
Our love embraces all mankind
Of every colour race and creed
Our love is international universal
We are all brothers every one
And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice
And they turned their faces away and said
Our Kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world
Our life on earth is out a pilgrimage
The soul lives on humility and patience
At the same time screwing from the poor their last centime
They settled down among their treasures
And ate and drank with princes
And to the starving they said
Suffer
Suffer as he suffered on the cross
For it is the will of God
And anyone believes what they hear over and over again
So the poor instead of bread made do with a picture
Of the bleeding scourged and nailed-up Christ
And prayed to that image of their helplessness
And the priests said
Raise your hands to heaven bend your knees
And bear your suffering without complaint
For prayer and blessing are the only stairways
Which you can climb to Paradise
And so they chained down the poor in their ignorance
So that they wouldn't stand up and fight their bosses
Who ruled in the name of the lie of divine right
Chorus:
Amen

The important thing
is to pull yourself up by your own hair
to turn yourself inside out
and see the whole world with fresh eyes

Chiedi al Bunkerjakob
che controllava tutto
Come fai a resistere
Lui disse
Sia lode a quanto
rende duri
Io sto bene
mangio le razioni
di quelli là dentro
La loro morte non mi tocca
Tutto questo mi tocca
quanto può toccarmi
la pietra di questo muro