Top 80 Friedrich Dürrenmatt Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Emotions have no place in business, unless you do business with them.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

2. “It is only in love and murder that we still remain sincere.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

3. “So then learn to conquer your fear. This is the only art we have to master nowadays: to look at things without fear, and to fearlessly do right.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

4. “Humor is the mask of wisdom.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

5. “Without tolerance, our world turns into hell.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

6. “He who confronts the paradoxical exposes himself to reality.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

7. “Resistance at all cost is the most senseless act there is.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

8. “What concerns everyone can only be resolved by everyone.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

9. “Pretend to be dumb, that’s the only way to reach old age.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

10. “As the Americans slaughter millions of turkeys every year for the celebration of their deliverance, the Indians, who should be celebrated as saviors, have long been slaughtered. There was even a time when a white man was paid a very decent price for every Indian scalp he could produce.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

11. “The evolution of humans can not only be seen as the grand total of their wars; it is also defined by the evolution of the human mind and the development of the human consciousness.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

12. “Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Featured in: Strong Quotes

13. “Truth is always a delusion.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

14. “A state always calls itself fatherland when it is ready for murder.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

15. “What the world needs is not redemption from sin but redemption from hunger and oppression; it has no need to pin its hopes upon Heaven, it has everything to hope for from this earth.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

16. “The content of physics is the concern of physicists, its effect the concern of all men.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

17. “Human life is beyond comprehension.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

18. “Above all, be suspicious of your fatherland. Nobody is more inclined to become a murderer than a fatherland.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

19. “The rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

20. “We are not cave dwellers anymore, we live in the age of technology. When someone needs a car, he does not need to build it. He can buy it. When someone needs a murder, he himself does not need to kill. He can order it.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

21. “Someone who is about to die does not mourn the dead.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

22. “The archetype of all humans, their ideal image, is the computer, once it has liberated itself from its creator, man. The computeris the essence of the human being. In the computer, man reaches his completion.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

23. “A writer doesn’t solve problems. He allows them to emerge.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

24. “Every work of art depicts an aspect of reality.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

25. “Religion and political expediency go beautifully hand in hand.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

26. “Whoever is content with the world, and who profits from its lack of justice, does not want to change it.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

27. “The freedom of each individual can only be the freedom of all.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

28. “The worst possible turn can not be programmed. It is caused by coincidence.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

29. “We can’t afford the wrath of Heaven. We survived a deluge by the skin of our teeth, but an economic crisis would be disastrous.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

30. “When death has you by the throat, you don’t mince words.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

31. “The only remedy against hunger is reasonable birth control.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

32. “The difference between humans and wild animals is that humans pray before they commit murder.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

33. “The world is bad but not without hope. It is only hopeless when you look at it from an ideal viewpoint.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

34. “The problems of all of humanity can only be solved by all of humanity.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

35. “That there is also freedom in captivity, only a prisoner can claim. Coming from a prison guard, this statement would be blasphemy.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

36. “Nothing that has been thought can ever be taken back.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

37. “This inhuman world has to become more humane. But how?”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

38. “Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

39. “News reports don’t change the world. Only facts change it, and those have already happened when we get the news.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

40. “A story has been thought to its conclusion when it has taken its worst possible turn.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

41. “In this country, you never pull the emergency brake, even when there is an emergency. It is imperative that the trains run on schedule.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

42. “Power is paradoxical.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

43. “A story is not finished, until it took the worst turn.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

44. “The savages don’t have atom bombs.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

45. “People like us who are on their last leg can only understand comedies.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

46. “Who sows fear, reaps weapons.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

47. “The planet on which we live is poorly organized, many areas are overpopulated, others are reserved for a few, technology’s potential is only in part realized, and most people are starving.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

48. “Before anything else, we need a new age of Enlightenment. Our present political systems must relinquish their claims on truth, justice and freedom and have to replace them with the search for truth, justice, freedom and reason.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

49. “The individual protests against the world, but he doesn’t get beyond protest, he is just a single protester. When he wants to be more than that, he has to counter power with power, he has to oppose the system with another system.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

50. “To make the essence of man visible in the exposure is the highest art of photography.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt