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The 20 best sentences of Bertolt Brecht

The 20 best sentences of Bertolt Brecht

April 2, 2024

Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1956), born as Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht), was a German dramatist and poet and created the so-called epic theater. He is considered one of the most creative and brilliant writers of the 20th century.

Driven by a desire for individual differentiation, the young Bertolt Brecht decided to go against the grain of a well-off society with too many conventionalisms. Although he enrolled in medical school, he would soon drop out of school and dedicate himself to writing and directing plays.

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Famous quotes by Bertolt Brecht

Communist and defender of the class struggle, Bertolt Brecht was a passionate intellectual in his time, to the point where he was persecuted by Hitler and had to go into exile in different European countries.


In today's article let's get to know closely the figure of this important German thinker and playwright through the 20 best sentences of Bertolt Brecht .

1. The greatest gift you can give to others is the example of your own life.

His moral precepts are summarized in this famous quote.

2. First goes eating, then goes the moral.

Politics is useless if some basic issues are not solved.

3. Art, when it is good, is always entertainment.

Reflection on art and its ability to move us.

4. Many judges are absolutely incorruptible; No one can induce them to do justice.

Ironic phrase about the opacity and arbitrariness of justice.


5. What is the theft of a bank compared to founding one?

Communist and faithful to his principles, he considered the capitalist system as the cause of certain evils and shortages of his nation.

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6. When hypocrisy begins to be of very poor quality, it is time to start telling the truth.

The lies and the double face can not last in time.

7. With the war the properties of the hacendados increase, the misery of the miserable increases, the discourses of the general increase, and the silence of the men grows.

Those who organize wars always benefit after conflicts.

8. Art is not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer to shape it.

Reflection on art and its social and cultural function.

9. The crisis occurs when the old does not just die and when the new is not just born.

One of the most famous and remembered phrases of Bertolt Brecht, about the passing of time and the incipient emergence of a new world order.


10. History loves paradoxes.

Excerpt from one of your missives.

11. Those who seek, to reform us, overcome our criminal instinct, to give us first to eat. Of moral we will speak later. Those who do not forget to take care of our training, but for that reason stop getting fat, listen to this: no matter how hard they turn, it is first to eat, and after getting tired, morality comes!

An allegation against the ruling elites.

12. Nature has perfections to prove that it is God's image and imperfections to prove that it is only an image.

Fantastic reflection on the natural environment.

13. If people want to see only the things they can understand, they would not have to go to the theater: they would have to go to the bathroom.

About the prevailing ignorance in his time.

14. The bourgeois democrats condemn with emphasis the barbaric methods of their neighbors, and their accusations impress their audiences so much that they forget that such methods are also practiced in their own countries.

Critic to bourgeois thought.

15. To be against fascism without being against capitalism, to rebel against the barbarity that is born of barbarism, is equivalent to claim a part of the calf and oppose to sacrifice it.

There is no point in being alone against the superficial aspect that inequality causes.

16. There are men who fight one day and are good. There are others that fight for a year and are better. Some fight for many years and are very good. But there are those who fight all their lives: those are the essentials.

One of Bertolt Brecht's most memorable phrases, about the incessant effort of good men.

17. I look like the one who carried the brick with him to show the world what his house was like.

Metaphor to reflect on the example we give to others.

18. Certain countries still manage to preserve their forms of property through less violent means than others. However, capitalist monopolies everywhere create barbarous conditions in factories, mines and fields. But while bourgeois democracies guarantee capitalists, without recourse to violence, the possession of the means of production, barbarism recognizes that monopolies can only be defended by declared violence.

Sociological thinking to understand the market economy and the creation of oligopolies through the monopoly of violence represented by the State.

19. Gentlemen, do not be so happy with the defeat of Hitler. Because even if the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the whore who bore him is in heat again.

The shadow of the dictator was long.

20. In dark times, will it be sung too? It will also be sung about dark times.

Doubts that are born of his sad days in full emergence of the III Reich.


TOP 20 Bertolt Brecht Quotes (April 2024).


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