The 20 best quotes by Bertolt Brecht

Playwright and poet, his life in exile leaves us memorable reflections in the form of famous quotes.

Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1956), born as Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht), was a German playwright 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 yearning for individual differentiation, the young Bertolt Brecht decided to go against the tide of an affluent society with too many conventions. Although he enrolled in medical school, he soon abandoned his studies and devoted himself to writing and directing plays.

Bertolt Brecht's Famous Phrases

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

In today's article we are going to know closely the figure of this important German thinker and playwright through the 20 best phrases 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 comes eating, then comes morality.

Politics is useless if some basic issues are not solved.

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

Reflection on art and its capacity 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 robbing 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.

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

Lies and double-facedness cannot last in time.

7. With the war the properties of the landowners increase, the misery of the miserable increases, the speeches of the general increase, and the silence of men increases.

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 finish dying and when the new is not born.

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

10. History loves paradoxes.

Excerpt from one of his missives.

11. Those who pretend, in order to reform us, to overcome our criminal instinct, to feed us first. We will talk about morals later. Those who do not forget to take care of our education, without forgetting to put on weight, listen to this: no matter how much they turn it around, first we must eat, and after we have had enough, let's have morals!

A plea against the ruling elites.

12. Nature has perfections to prove that it is the image of God 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 of his time.

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

Criticism of bourgeois thought.

15. To be against fascism without being against capitalism, to rebel against the barbarism that is born of barbarism, is tantamount to claiming a share of the calf and opposing its slaughter.

It is of no use to be only against the superficial aspect that causes inequality.

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

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

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

Metaphor to reflect on the example we set for others.

18. Some countries still manage to preserve their forms of property by less violent means than others. Nevertheless, capitalist monopolies everywhere give rise to barbarous conditions in factories, mines and fields. But while bourgeois democracies guarantee the capitalists, without recourse to violence, the possession of the means of production, barbarism is recognized in that the 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 Hitler's defeat. Because although the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the whore that bore him is back in heat.

The dictator's shadow was long.

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

Doubts born of his sad days in the midst of the rise of the Third Reich.