Bertolt Brecht Quotes

German poet, playwright, and theatre director1898–1956 10 quotes

Bertolt Brecht was a German playwright, poet and theatre practitioner. After early success in Munich he moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill. Drawn to Marxist ideas, he became a leading theorist of epic theatre, which he later preferred to call dialectical theatre, and of the alienation effect.

He fled Germany when the Nazis took power in 1933, living in Scandinavia and then Southern California, where the FBI watched him. In 1947 he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and left for Europe the day after. He settled in East Berlin and founded the Berliner Ensemble with his wife, the actress Helene Weigel.
Most quoted works
  • Galileo 2
  • Mother Courage and Her Children 2
  • Poems 1913-1956 2
  • The Threepenny Opera 2
German poet, playwright, and theatre director

Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes

— Galileo

German poet, playwright, and theatre director

The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.

— Life of Galileo

German poet, playwright, and theatre director

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.

— Poems 1913-1956

German poet, playwright, and theatre director

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.

— Mother Courage and Her Children

German poet, playwright, and theatre director

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?

— The Threepenny Opera

German poet, playwright, and theatre director

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.

— Fear and Misery of the Third Reich

German poet, playwright, and theatre director

Carpenter: "Call Shen Te, someone! She's good!"Shui Ta: "Certainly. She's ruined.

— The Good Woman of Setzuan

German poet, playwright, and theatre director

Such a lot is won when even a single man gets to his feet and says No

— Galileo

German poet, playwright, and theatre director

Hatred of oppression still distorts the features, Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly. Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness, Could never be friendly ourselves.

— Poems 1913-1956

German poet, playwright, and theatre director

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.

— Mother Courage and Her Children