“Art is not a mirror. Art is a hammer.”

Recently my fingers have developed a prejudice against comparatives. They all follow this pattern: a squirrel is smaller than a tree; a bird is more musical than a tree.

You have to attack once the truth is too weak to defend itself.

One can describe the world of today to the people of today only if one describes it as capable of alteration.

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.

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.

When the leaders speak of peace The common folk know That war is coming When the leaders curse war

Life is short and so is money.

With drooping shoulders The majority sit hunched, their foreheads furrowed like Stony ground that has been repeatedly ploughed-up to no purpose.

Whenever there are great virtues, it’s a sure sign something’s wrong.

The alienation effect in German epic theater is achieved not only through the actors, but also through music (chorus and song) andsets (transparencies, film strips, etc.). Its main purpose is to place the staged events in their historical context.

War is like love, it always finds a way.

Love is the wish to give, not to receive.

There are men who struggle for a day and they are good. There are men who struggle for a year and they are better. There are men who struggle many years, and they are better still. But there are those who struggle all their lives: These are the indispensable ones.

Suppose they gave a war, and nobody came? Why then, the war would come to you!

The fate of man is man.

The right to happiness is fundamental; men live so little time and die alone.

If I had a hammer, there’d be no more folksingers.

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

If you have a hammer, use it everywhere you can, but I do not claim that everything is fractal.

The implied threat of using nuclear weapons to curb guerrillas was as absurd as to talk of using a sledge hammer to ward off a swarm of mosquitoes.