Top 180 Bertolt Brecht Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 3 of 4

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

— Bertolt Brecht

102. “Eats first, morals after.”

— Bertolt Brecht

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

— Bertolt Brecht

104. “Impact lies in the vicinity of mistakes.”

— Bertolt Brecht

105. “Though the rich of this earth find no difficulty in creating misery, they can’t bear to see it.”

— Bertolt Brecht

106. “Today every invention is received with a cry of triumph which soon turns into a cry of fear.”

— Bertolt Brecht

107. “First the grub, then the morals.”

— Bertolt Brecht

108. “You don’t need to pray to God any more when there are storms in the sky, but you do have to be insured.”

— Bertolt Brecht

109. “What they could do with ’round here is a good war. What else can you expect with peace running wild all over the place? You know what the trouble with peace is? No organization.”

— Bertolt Brecht

110. “The fanatics for progress often have too little appreciation of the existing.”

— Bertolt Brecht

111. “There are times when you have to choose between being human and having good taste.”

— Bertolt Brecht

112. “Terrible is the temptation to be good.”

— Bertolt Brecht

113. “Come in, dear wind, and be our guest You too have neither home nor rest.”

— Bertolt Brecht

114. “It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk.”

— Bertolt Brecht

115. “All the world says: yes we know what’s written in the books but now let’s see what our eyes tell us.”

— Bertolt Brecht

116. “Spring is noticed, if at all By people sitting in railway trains.”

— Bertolt Brecht

117. “Here today we huddle tight As the darkest heathens might The snow falls chilly on our skin The snow is forcing its way in. Hush, snow, come in with us to dwell: We were thrown out by Heaven as well.”

— Bertolt Brecht

118. “Mixing one’s wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.”

— Bertolt Brecht

119. “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.”

— Bertolt Brecht

120. “The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What’s left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.”

— Bertolt Brecht

121. “Think with feeling.”

— Bertolt Brecht

122. “There are a few things that’ll move people to pity, a few, but the trouble is, when they’ve been used several times, they no longer work.”

— Bertolt Brecht

123. “Right is its own defense.”

— Bertolt Brecht

124. “Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself.”

— Bertolt Brecht

125. “Stupidity isn’t invincible.”

— Bertolt Brecht

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

— Bertolt Brecht

127. “Every time you name yourself, you name someone else.”

— Bertolt Brecht

128. “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

129. “General, your tank is a powerful vehicle it smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men. but it has one defect: it needs a driver.”

— Bertolt Brecht

130. “The fate of man is man.”

— Bertolt Brecht

131. “Those who are against Fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf.”

— Bertolt Brecht

132. “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

133. “One must live well to know what living is.”

— Bertolt Brecht

134. “The defeats and victories of the fellows at the top aren’t always defeats and victories for the fellows at the bottom.”

— Bertolt Brecht

135. “I don’t know what a man is. Only that every man has his price.”

— Bertolt Brecht

136. “Life is short and so is money.”

— Bertolt Brecht

137. “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

138. “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.”

— Bertolt Brecht

139. “The compassion of the oppressed for the oppressed is indispensable. It is the world’s one hope.”

— Bertolt Brecht

140. “Don’t tell me peace has broken out.”

— Bertolt Brecht

141. “It’s never too late for those whose time has come.”

— Bertolt Brecht

142. “A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.”

— Bertolt Brecht

143. “People are too durable, that’s their main trouble. They can do too much to themselves, they last too long.”

— Bertolt Brecht

144. “From the cradle to the coffin underwear comes first.”

— Bertolt Brecht

145. “When the house of a great one collapses Many little ones are slain.”

— Bertolt Brecht

146. “If you join the rat race – you’re in the race of rats.”

— Bertolt Brecht

147. “The most important thing is to learn to think crudely. Crude thinking is the thinking of great men.”

— Bertolt Brecht

148. “Girl Tractorist: As the poet Mayakovsky said: “The home of the Soviet people shall be the home of Reason”!”

— Bertolt Brecht

149. “Some party hack decreed that the people had lost the government’s confidence and could only regain it with redoubled effort. If that is the case, would it not be be simpler, If the government simply dissolved the people And elected another?”

— Bertolt Brecht

150. “He says he’d like to kiss the ground you walk on-reminds me, did you wash them yesterday?- and after that you’re his skivvy.”

— Bertolt Brecht