Bertolt Brecht
You can make a fresh start with your final breath.Collection: Finals
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.Collection: Summer
Would it not be simpler If the Government dissolved the people and elected another?Collection: Government
There must always be some who are brighter and some who are stupider, the latter make up for it by being better workers.Collection: Stupidity
What's a joy to the one is a nightmare to the other.Collection: Joy
Righteous people have no sense of humor.Collection: People
Things take indeed a wondrous turn When learned men do stoop to learn.Collection: Men
It’s all right to hesitate if you then go ahead.Collection: Travel
If art reflects life, it does so with special mirrors.Collection: Art
I'm in good form, taking no interest in things, neglecting clothes, meals, company, and feeling calm and stable as I write.Collection: Writing
A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.Collection: Men
Firebugs dragging their gasoline bottles are approaching the Academy of Arts, with a grin. And so, instead of embracing them, let us demand the freedom of the elbow to knock the bottles out of their filthy hands. Even the most blockheaded bureaucrat, provided he loves peace, is a greater lover of the arts than any so-called art-lover who loves the arts of war.Collection: Art
...it is simplicity that is difficult to make.Collection: Simplicity
From the start it has been the theatre's business to entertain people ... it needs no other passport than fun.Collection: Fun
The finest plans are always ruined by the littleness of those who ought to carry them out, for emperor himself can actually be nothing.Collection: Finest
General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think.Collection: Men
The rain Never falls upwards. When the wound Stops hurting What hurts is The scar.Collection: Hurt
Impact lies in the vicinity of mistakes.Collection: Mistake
Of all the works of man I like best Those which have been used. The copper pots with their dents and flattened edges The knives and forks whose wooden handles Have been worn away by many hands: such forms Seemed to me the noblest.Collection: Men
Only bad generals need heroes.Collection: Hero
I am a playwright. I show What I have seen. In the man markets I have seen how men are traded. That I show, I, the playwright.Collection: Men
Today every invention is received with a cry of triumph which soon turns into a cry of fear.Collection: Fear
Here today we huddle tight As the darkest heathens might The snow falls chilly on our skin The snow is forcing its way in. Hush, snow, come in with us to dwell: We were thrown out by Heaven as well.Collection: Fall
The storm that bends the birch trees Is held to be violent But how about the storm That bends the backs of the roadworkers?Collection: Tree
One cannot be arraigned for declaring a war, which every ruler has to do once in a while, but only for running a war badly.Collection: Running
Sometimes I have visions of myself driving through hell, selling sulphur and brimstone, or through heaven peddling refreshments to the roaming souls. If me and the children I've got left could find a place where there's no shooting, I wouldn't mind a few years of peace and quiet.Collection: Children
The righteous one has no sense of humor.Collection: Humor
When the house of a great one collapses Many little ones are slain.Collection: House
General, your tank is a powerful vehicle it smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men. but it has one defect: it needs a driver.Collection: Crush
When you name yourself, you always name another.Collection: Names
What rapture, oh, it is to know A good thing when you see it And having seen a good thing, oh, What rapture 'tis to flee it.Collection: Good Things
The mill wheel turns, it turns forever, though what is uppermost remains not so.Collection: Forever
A good soldier has his heart and soul in it. When he receives an order, he gets a hard on, and when he drives his lance through his enemy's guts, he comes.Collection: Art
Who fights may lose, but who does not fight has lost already.Collection: Fighting
I don't know what a man is. Only that every man has his price.Collection: Men
Even hatred of vileness Distorts a mans features.Collection: Hatred
Schoenberg is too melodious for me, too sweet.Collection: Sweet
Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself.Collection: Dwelling
Their peace and their war Are like wind and storm. War grows from their peace.Collection: War
The man who laughs has simply not yet had the terrible news.Collection: Laughter
Love is also like a coconut which is good while it is fresh, but you have to spit it out when the juice is gone, what's left tastes bitter.Collection: Love
When the praying does no good, insurance does help.Collection: Doe
Unhappiness doesn't grow on the chest like leprosy. Poverty won't fall off the roof like a loose tile, no; poverty and unhappiness are man's doing.Collection: Fall
Alas,we who wanted kindness, could not be kind ourselves.Collection: Kindness
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.Collection: Kissing
The fanatics for progress often have too little appreciation of the existing.Collection: Appreciation
When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’ it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.Collection: Mean
Art is not a mirror. Art is a hammer.Collection: Art