Quotes from Bertolt Brecht

Everyone needs help from everyone.

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.

No one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand.

From the start it has been the theatre's business to entertain people ... it needs no other passport than fun.

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.

There are some with brains and some without. It makes for a better division of labour.

Unhappy the land that needs heroes.

Though the rich of this earth find no difficulty in creating misery, they can't bear to see it.

The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it.

What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?

Let nothing be called natural In an age of bloody confusion, Ordered disorder, planned caprice, And dehumanized humanity, lest all things Be held unalterable!

When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.

The storm that bends the birch trees Is held to be violent But how about the storm That bends the backs of the roadworkers?

People remain what they are even if their faces fall apart.

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.

You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!

Love is the desire to give, not to receive, something. Love is the art of producing something with the other's talents.

Truly, I live in dark times!The guileless word is folly. A smooth foreheadSuggests insensitivity. The man who laughsHas simply not yet hadThe terrible news.

Alas, weWho wished to lay the foundations of kindness,Could not ourselves be kind.But you, when at last it comes to passThat man can help his fellow man,Do not judge usToo harshly.

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.

O Germany, pale mother!

Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear—And he shows them pearly white—Just a jackknife has Macheath, dear—And he keeps it out of sight.

Don't tell me peace has broken out.