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.
BERTOLT BRECHTGeneral, your bomber is powerful. It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant. But it has one defect: It needs a mechanic. General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think.
More Bertolt Brecht Quotes
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Why be a man when you can be a success?
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All artforms are in the service of the greatest of all arts: the art of living.
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Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself.
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In the contradiction lies the hope.
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Those who take the most from the table, teach contentment. Those for whom the taxes are destined, demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry, of wonderful times to come. Those who lead the country into the abyss, call ruling difficult, for ordinary folk.
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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.
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Pleasures First look from morning’s window The rediscovered book Fascinated faces Snow, the change of the seasons
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With drooping shoulders The majority sit hunched, their foreheads furrowed like Stony ground that has been repeatedly ploughed-up to no purpose.
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Whenever there are great virtues, it’s a sure sign something’s wrong.
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People who understand everything get no stories.
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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.
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Life is short and so is money.
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General, your bomber is powerful. It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant. But it has one defect: It needs a mechanic. General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think.
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The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.
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If you fight you might lose, if you don’t you have already lost.
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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.
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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.
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He who speaks of enemies , himself is the enemy.
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From the start it has been the theatre’s business to entertain people … it needs no other passport than fun.
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Those who have had no share in the good fortunes of the mighty Often have a share in their misfortunes.
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The worst illiterate is the political illiterate. He hears nothing, sees nothing, takes no part in political life. He doesn’t seem to know that the cost of living, the price of beans, of flour, of rent, of medicines all depend on political decisions.
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When the leaders speak of peace The common folk know That war is coming When the leaders curse war
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Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not.
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You can’t write poems about trees when the woods are full of policemen.
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A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.
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Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
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