Top 180 Bertolt Brecht Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Facts are facts, whisper them or shout them.”

— Bertolt Brecht

152. “How can one remain free of every weakness, above all of the most deadly, of love?”

— Bertolt Brecht

153. “Who has good luck is good, Who has bad luck is bad.”

— Bertolt Brecht

154. “There are many elements to a campaign. Leadership is number one. Everything else is number two.”

— Bertolt Brecht

155. “He’ll never be conquered, that man, and you know why? We all back him up – the little fellows like you and me. Oh yes, to hear the big fellows talk, they ’re fighting for their beliefs and so on, but if you look into it, you find they’re not that silly: they do want to make a profit on the deal. So you and I back them up! COOK.”

— Bertolt Brecht

156. “Even hatred of vileness Distorts a mans features.”

— Bertolt Brecht

157. “Don’t be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.”

— Bertolt Brecht

158. “Character is a question of time. It lasts for a certain length of time, just like a glove. There are good ones that last a long time. But they don’t last forever.”

— Bertolt Brecht

159. “Those who have had no share in the good fortunes of the mighty Often have a share in their misfortunes.”

— Bertolt Brecht

160. “Schoenberg is too melodious for me, too sweet.”

— Bertolt Brecht

161. “What’s a joy to the one is a nightmare to the other.”

— Bertolt Brecht

162. “Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not.”

— Bertolt Brecht

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

— Bertolt Brecht

164. “It isn’t important to come out on top, what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.”

— Bertolt Brecht

165. “He was weak on philosophy and an excellent driver, but his driving was a lot more dangerous than his philosophy.”

— Bertolt Brecht

166. “I discovered our dear poet in my office, a simple clerk.”

— Bertolt Brecht

167. “For what’s the use of talking with a man who has a disease and thinks about the stars?”

— Bertolt Brecht

168. “One day somebody asked Herr K. if there was a God. Herr K. replied: “I suggest that you ask yourself whether the answer would effect your behavior. If your behavior would remain unchanged, then we can drop the question. If it would change, then I can at least be of assistance to you by telling you that you have already decided: you need a God.”

— Bertolt Brecht

169. “There are some with brains and some without. It makes for a better division of labour.”

— Bertolt Brecht

170. “For the wickedness of the world is so great you have to run your legs off in order to avoid having them stolen from under you.”

— Bertolt Brecht

171. “One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.”

— Bertolt Brecht

172. “Pada malam ketika Tembok Tiongkok jadi, ke manakah para tukang batu pergi?”

— Bertolt Brecht

173. “One cannot be arraigned for declaring a war, which every ruler has to do once in a while, but only for running a war badly.”

— Bertolt Brecht

174. “We’re not responsible, he thought. This planet is a temporary affair. It’s whizzing with all kinds of other ones, a whole range of planetary stuff, toward a star in the Milky Way. On that kind of a planet we’re not responsible, he thought.”

— Bertolt Brecht

175. “And I did work out something: that the rich of the earth indeed create misery, but they cannot bear to see it. They are weaklings and fools just like you. As long as they have enough to eat and can grease their floors with butter so that even the crumbs that fall from your table grow fat, they can’t look with indifference on a man collapsing from hunger – although, of course, it must be in front of their house that he collapses.”

— Bertolt Brecht

176. “You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy, but till you feed us right and wrong can wait. Or is it only those who have the money who can enter the land of milk and honey?”

— Bertolt Brecht

177. “For the task assigned them Men aren’t smart enough or sly Any rogue can blind them With a clever lie.”

— Bertolt Brecht

178. “Then I’ll go on, get it off my chest. It all starts with yours truly growing up in lovely Flanders, else I’d never of seen him and wouldn’t be stuck here now in Poland, cause he was an army cook, fair-haired, a Dutchman but thin for once. Kattrin, watch out for the thin ones, only in those days I didn’t know that, or that he’d got a girl already, or that they all called him Puffing Piet cause he never took out his pipe out of his mouth when he was on the job, it meant that little to him.”

— Bertolt Brecht

179. “We often do not know ourselves the grounds On which we act, though plain to others.”

— Bertolt Brecht

180. “The noblest plans are brought down through the low-mindedness of those who are supposed to carry them out.”

— Bertolt Brecht

181. “For the villainy of the world is great, and a man has to run his legs off to keep them from being stolen out fom underneath him.”

— Bertolt Brecht

182. “If you stuffed a ship full to bursting point with human bodies, there would be such loneliness that they would all freeze.”

— Bertolt Brecht

183. “People cannot remain good unless good is expected of them.”

— Bertolt Brecht

184. “THE POLICEMAN: I’m a policeman. I’m paid by those in charge to combat dissatisfaction.”

— Bertolt Brecht

185. “For time is short and the unknown surrounds us; and it isn’t enough just to live unthinking and happy, calmly bearing oppression and only learning wisdom with age.”

— Bertolt Brecht

186. “They’ve filed down whatever edges we used to have.”

— Bertolt Brecht

187. “It was never decreed that a god mustn’t pay hotel bills.”

— Bertolt Brecht

188. “Corpses sour you. They are bad for objectivity.”

— Bertolt Brecht

189. “Singer: It may be a mistake to mix different wines, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.”

— Bertolt Brecht

190. “Where else are you going to get morality from, is what I say? Peace is just piggishness, it takes war to establish order.”

— Bertolt Brecht

191. “If there are obstacles, the shortest line between two points may be the crooked one.”

— Bertolt Brecht

192. “A good soldier has his heart and soul in it. When he receives an order, he gets a hard on, and when he drives his lance through his enemy’s guts, he comes.”

— Bertolt Brecht