None will improve your lot If you yourself do not.
BERTOLT BRECHTPoverty makes you wise but it’s a curse.
More Bertolt Brecht Quotes
-
-
Each of us is the strongest one in his or her own skin. Characteristics should take off their hats to one another, instead of spitting in each other’s faces.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
…it is simplicity that is difficult to make.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
The finest plans are always ruined by the littleness of those who ought to carry them out, for emperor himself can actually be nothing.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
The shrill voices of those who give orders Are full of fear like the squeakings of Piglets awaiting the butcher’s knife, as their fat arses Sweat with anxiety in their office chairs…. Fear rules not only those who are ruled, but The rulers too.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
The fanatics for progress often have too little appreciation of the existing.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
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.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
I was called up in the war and sent to a hospital. I dressed wounds, applied iodine, gave enemas, did blood transfusions. If the doctor ordered: “Brecht, amputate a leg!”, I would reply, “Certainly, Your Excellency!”, and cut off the leg. If I was told, “Perform a trepanning!”
BERTOLT BRECHT -
Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
Art and science work in quite different ways: agreed. But, bad as it may sound, I have to admit that I cannot get along as an artist without the use of one or two sciences. …
BERTOLT BRECHT -
Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
Those who have had no share in the good fortunes of the mighty Often have a share in their misfortunes.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
The rain Never falls upwards. When the wound Stops hurting What hurts is The scar.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
What a miserable thing life is: you’re in clover; only the clover isn’t good enough.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
Everyone needs help from everyone.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
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.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
Grub first, then ethics.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
As regards obstacles, the shortest distance between two points can be a curve.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it’s all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It’s the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
When the praying does no good, insurance does help.
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 -
He who speaks of enemies , himself is the enemy.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
I don’t like where I’m going and I don’t like where I’ve been. Why am I in a hurry?
BERTOLT BRECHT -
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.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
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.
BERTOLT BRECHT -
Sometimes it’s more important to be human, than to have good taste.
BERTOLT BRECHT