You don’t need to pray to God any more when there are storms in the sky, but you do have to be insured.
—Bertolt Brecht
It isn’t important to come out on top, what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Expectations, Acceptance, Realization, Awareness
A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Acting, Actors
No one will improve your lot if you do not yourself.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Responsibility
Science knows only one commandment—contribute to science.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Scientists, Science
What’s a joy to the one is a nightmare to the other.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Happiness, Aptness, Appropriateness
Mixing one’s wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Wisdom, Wine
The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don’t understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Law, Lawyers
No one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Goodness
Right is its own defense.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Rightness, Right, Defense
Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Failures, Mistakes, Intelligence
Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Unhappiness, Heroes, One liners, Heroism, Heroes/Heroism
For once you must try not to shirk the facts: mankind is kept alive by bestial acts.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Sex
Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
—Bertolt Brecht
Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is at their heels.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Happiness
From the cradle to the coffin underwear comes first.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Fashion, Dress
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.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Theater
People remain what they are, even when their faces fall to pieces.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Awareness, Faces, Face, Acceptance, Realization
Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Weapon
The mill wheel turns, it turns forever, though what is uppermost remains not so.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Change
The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn when teachers themselves are taught to learn.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Teachers, Teaching
A man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time he’ll give him sixpence. But the second time it’ll only be a three penny bit. And if he sees him a third time, he’ll have him cold-bloodedly handed over to the police.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Charity
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Change
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.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Reality
Don’t be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Life and Living
The defeats and victories of the fellows at the top aren’t always defeats and victories for the fellows at the bottom
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Victory, Defeat
What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Mystery
What a miserable thing life is: you’re living in clover, only the clover isn’t good enough.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Gratitude, Blessings
Today every invention is received with a cry of triumph which soon turns into a cry of fear.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Invention
It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk.
—Bertolt Brecht
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe German Poet
- Friedrich Schiller German Poet
- Berthold Auerbach German Novelist
- Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock German Poet
- Carl Zuckmayer German Playwright
- Hans Carossa German Novelist
- Erich Fromm German Social Philosopher
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing German Writer
- Henrik Ibsen Norwegian Playwright
- Werner Heisenberg German Theoretical Physicist
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