black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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.

Bertolt Brecht

Who does Not Know the Truth, is simply a Fool… Yet who Knows the Truth and Calls it a Lie, is a Criminal.
BERTOLT BRECHT

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

Confusion Humanity Nature
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.
BERTOLT BRECHT

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

Majority Purpose Shoulders
One can describe the world of today to the people of today only if one describes it as capable of alteration.
BERTOLT BRECHT

People Today World
The righteous one has no sense of humor.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Humor One Righteous Sense
Who has good luck is good, Who has bad luck is bad.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Bad Good Luck
For the task assigned them Men aren’t smart enough or sly Any rogue can blind them With a clever lie.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Clever Lying Smart
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.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Good Knows Rapture Things
As regards obstacles, the shortest distance between two points can be a curve.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Curves Distance Two
People cannot remain good unless good is expected of them.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Expected Good People Remain
Whenever there are great virtues, it’s a sure sign something’s wrong.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Great Something Virtue Wrong
Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Dammed Easy Important
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.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Audience Discovery Experience Joy Pleasure Schooled
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

Going Hurry Like
What kind of times are they, when A talk about trees is almost a crime Because it implies silence about so many horrors?
BERTOLT BRECHT

Kind Silence Tree
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

Giving Men Police Six Street Time
Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Anger Dies Moral
The mill wheel turns, it turns forever, though what is uppermost remains not so.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Forever Mills Wheels
To those who does not know the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Fire Nothing World
For time flows on, and if it did not, it would be a bad prospect for those who do not sit at golden tables.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Order Reality Tables
It was never decreed that a god mustn’t pay hotel bills.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Bills Hotel Pay
Writers can’t write as fast as governments make wars; because to write demands thinking.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Thinking War Writing
Oh! Moon of Alabama We now must say good-bye We’ve lost our good old mama And must have whiskey Oh, you know why!
BERTOLT BRECHT

Alabama Bye Moon
Impact lies in the vicinity of mistakes.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Impact Lying Mistakes
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

Condition Example Made Realist
Though the rich of this earth find no difficulty in creating misery, they can’t bear to see it.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Bears Creating Earth

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bertolt Brecht Quotes