82 quotes
When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!"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.
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)
Mr. Wurlitzer, I am now in a position to receive your organ.
Happy End (1929)
Play your part creatively in all the struggles
Of men of your time, thereby
Helping, with the seriousness of study and the cheerfulness of knowledge
To turn the struggle into common experience and
Justice into a passion.
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)
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.
Mother Courage and Her Children (1939)
Those who are weak don't fight.
Those who are stronger might fight
for an hour.
Those who are stronger still might fight
for many years.
The strongest fight
their whole life.
They are the indispensable ones.
The Mother (1930)
This is the year which people will talk about
This is the year which people will be silent about.The old see the young die.
The foolish see the wise die.The earth no longer produces, it devours.
The sky hurls down no rain, only iron.
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)
Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.
Andrea: Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.
Galileo: No, Andrea: Unhappy is the land that needs a hero. [Unglücklich das Land, das Helden nötig hat.]
Life of Galileo (1939)
And I always thought: the very simplest words
Must be enough. When I say what things are like
Everyone's heart must be torn to shreds.
That you'll go down if you don't stand up for yourself
Surely you see that.
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)
People will observe you to see
How well you have observed.
The man who only observes himself however never gains
Knowledge of men. He is too anxious
To hide himself from himself. And nobody is
Cleverer than he himself is.
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)
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.
The Good Person of Sezuan (1943)
Oh the harsh snarl of guitar strings roaring!
Heavenly distensions of our throats!
Trousers stiff with dirt and love! Such whoring!
Long green slimy nights: we were like stoats.
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)
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.
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)
On golden chairs
Sitting at ease, you paid for the songs which we chanted
To those less lucky. You paid us for drying their tears
And for comforting all those whom you had wounded.
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)
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.
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)
Andrea: Unhappy is the land that has no hero.
Galileo: No, Andrea: Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.
Life of Galileo (1938)
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 simpler,
If the government simply dissolved the people
And elected another?
Firebugs dragging their gasoline bottles
Are approaching the Academy of Arts, with a grin.
And so, instead of embracing them,
Let us demand the freedom of the elbow
To knock the bottles out of their filthy hands.
Even the most blockheaded bureaucrat,
Provided he loves peace,
Is a greater lover of the arts
Than any so-called art-lover
Who loves the arts of war.
Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.
Disputed Mistakenly attributed to Vladimir Mayakovsky in The Political Psyche (1993)
What if they gave a war and no one came? Then the war will come to you.
Misattributed