Bertolt Brecht
94 quotes
Biography
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill and began a lifelong collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler.
"The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars."
"The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error."
"Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is at their heels."
"People remain what they are even if their faces fall apart."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!"
"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. <!-- NEED TO VERIFY -->"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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.]"
"Science has only one commandment: contribution."
"The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set some limit on infinite error."