Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Bertolt Brecht (German Poet)

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956,) fully Eugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht, was a German playwright, producer, and theoretician of “epic theatre.”

Before Bertolt, in naturalistic or dramatic theater, the spectators cared most about the lives of the characters in the performance. The audiences forgot their own lives for the time and donned the lives of the characters. In what was a remarkable departure, Bertolt encouraged audiences to see theatre as a staged illusion via a range of “alienation” techniques that he used to remind them that they were watching theater and not actual life.

Born in the Bavarian city of Augsburg, Brecht evaded the draft during World War I by studying medicine at the University of Munich but was conscripted anyway in 1918. While working as a corpsman in Augsburg’s military hospital, he witnessed the dreadful cost of war, which fortified his lasting pacifistic outlook.

Brecht’s influence on the modern stage is colossal. He transformed a variety of plays, including adaptations of John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, John Osborne’s Luther, and Edward Bond’s Saved. He achieved his greatest popular success in collaboration with composer Kurt Weill; they wrote the satirical Die Dreigroschenoper (1928; The Threepenny Opera,) a variation of English writer John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728.)

After World War I, Brecht espoused the Communist cause. In the 1930s, Brecht went into exile, fled to the USA in 1941, but returned to Europe in 1947. His other significant plays were all written during and just after World War II: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1941; Mother Courage and her Children, 1948,) Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (1943; translated as The Good Woman of Szechwan, 1961,) Leben des Galilei (1943; translated as The Life of Galileo, 1960,) and Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis (1948; translated as The Caucasian Chalk Circle, 1948.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Bertolt Brecht

Don’t be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Life and Living

It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk.
—Bertolt Brecht

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

Poverty makes you sad as well as wise.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: The Poor, Poverty

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

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

It isn’t important to come out on top, what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Acceptance, Expectations, Realization, Awareness

Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is at their heels.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Happiness

People are too durable, that’s their main trouble. They can do too much to themselves, they last too long.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Endurance

Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Intelligence, Mistakes, Failures

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Change

Grub first, then ethics.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Ethics

No one will improve your lot if you do not yourself.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Responsibility

As regards obstacles, the shortest distance between two points can be a curve.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Goals

The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn when teachers themselves are taught to learn.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Teachers, Teaching

Science knows only one commandment—contribute to science.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Scientists, Science

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 cunning to spread the truth among such persons.
—Bertolt Brecht

Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Media

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: Actors, Acting

For once you must try not to shirk the facts: mankind is kept alive by bestial acts.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Sex

Right is its own defense.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Rightness, Right, Defense

From the cradle to the coffin underwear comes first.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Dress, Fashion

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

Everyone needs help from everyone.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Service, Helping

What’s a joy to the one is a nightmare to the other.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Aptness, Happiness, Appropriateness

There must always be some who are brighter and some who are stupider. The latter make up for it by being better workers.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Stupidity

Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
—Bertolt Brecht

What a miserable thing life is: you’re living in clover, only the clover isn’t good enough.
—Bertolt Brecht
Topics: Gratitude, Blessings

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

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