Top 180 Bertolt Brecht Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “For art to be ‘unpolitical’ means only to ally itself with the ‘ruling’ group.”

— Bertolt Brecht

52. “Sometimes it’s more important to be human, than to have good taste.”

— Bertolt Brecht

53. “Who built the seven gates of Thebes? In the books are listed the names of kings. Did the kings heave up the building blocks?”

— Bertolt Brecht

54. “Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must change.”

— Bertolt Brecht

55. “What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?”

— Bertolt Brecht

56. “Grub first, then ethics.”

— Bertolt Brecht

57. “Temptation to behave is terrible.”

— Bertolt Brecht

58. “On thinking about Hell, I gather My brother Shelley found it was a place Much like the city of London. I Who live in Los Angeles and not in London Find, on thinking about Hell, that it must be Still more like Los Angeles.”

— Bertolt Brecht

59. “The mill wheel turns, it turns forever, though what is uppermost remains not so.”

— Bertolt Brecht

60. “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

61. “Poverty makes you wise but it’s a curse.”

— Bertolt Brecht

62. “Little changes are the enemies of great changes.”

— Bertolt Brecht

63. “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.”

— Bertolt Brecht

64. “It’s all right to hesitate if you then go ahead.”

— Bertolt Brecht

65. “First feed the face, then talk right and wrong.”

— Bertolt Brecht

66. “Things take indeed a wondrous turn When learned men do stoop to learn.”

— Bertolt Brecht

67. “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

68. “I don’t trust him. We’re friends.”

— Bertolt Brecht

69. “People who understand everything get no stories.”

— Bertolt Brecht

70. “When you name yourself, you always name another.”

— Bertolt Brecht

71. “War is like love, it always finds a way.”

— Bertolt Brecht

72. “All the gang of those who rule us Hope our quarrels never stop Helping them to split and fool us So they can remain on top.”

— Bertolt Brecht

73. “When the praying does no good, insurance does help.”

— Bertolt Brecht

74. “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

75. “Only bad generals need heroes.”

— Bertolt Brecht

76. “To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated.”

— Bertolt Brecht

77. “Das Schicksal des Menschen ist der Mensch.”

— Bertolt Brecht

78. “Poverty makes you sad as well as wise.”

— Bertolt Brecht

79. “As regards obstacles, the shortest distance between two points can be a curve.”

— Bertolt Brecht

80. “The war which is coming Is not the first one. There were Other wars before it. When the last one came to an end There were conquerors and conquered. Among the conquered the common people Starved. Among the conquerors The common people starved too.”

— Bertolt Brecht

81. “The storm that bends the birch trees Is held to be violent But how about the storm That bends the backs of the roadworkers?”

— Bertolt Brecht

82. “You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!”

— Bertolt Brecht

83. “The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don’t understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.”

— Bertolt Brecht

84. “Never believe on faith, see for yourself! What you yourself don’t learn you don’t know.”

— Bertolt Brecht

85. “Boy Meets Girl, So What?”

— Bertolt Brecht

86. “All I get from your victory is losses.”

— Bertolt Brecht

87. “People remain what they are even if their faces fall apart.”

— Bertolt Brecht

88. “Sin is what is new, strong, surprising, strange. The theatre must take an interest in sin if the young are to be able to go there.”

— Bertolt Brecht

89. “Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.”

— Bertolt Brecht

90. “Writers can’t write as fast as governments make wars; because to write demands thinking.”

— Bertolt Brecht

91. “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

92. “Sometimes I see myself driving through hell with this wagon and selling brimstone. And sometimes I’m driving through heaven handing our provisions to wandering souls! If only we could find a place where there’s no shooting, me and my children – what’s left of ‘em – we might rest a while.”

— Bertolt Brecht

93. “He who speaks of enemies, himself is the enemy.”

— Bertolt Brecht

94. “Would it not be simpler If the Government Dissolved the people And elected another?”

— Bertolt Brecht

95. “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

96. “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

97. “General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think.”

— Bertolt Brecht

98. “What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?”

— Bertolt Brecht

99. “For once you must try not to shirk the facts: mankind is kept alive by bestial acts.”

— Bertolt Brecht

100. “What a miserable thing life is: you’re in clover; only the clover isn’t good enough.”

— Bertolt Brecht