# Bertolt Brecht's most famous quotes

Brecht's best-known lines from The Threepenny Opera, Galileo, Arturo Ui and his poems, each with its work. No fakes: «Where injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty» is not documented in Brecht.

- 4 votes · 12 items
- Jan 18, 2022 · Sabine M.
- https://even.best/en/l/1389/bertolt-brecht-s-most-famous-quotes

## Top 12

1. **Food comes first, then morals.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — «What Keeps Mankind Alive?», The Threepenny Opera (1928).
2. **Oh the shark has pretty teeth, dear, / And he shows them pearly white.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The Ballad of Mack the Knife, opening The Threepenny Opera (1928), music by Kurt Weill.
3. **The womb he crawled from is still fertile.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Epilogue of «The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui» (1941), on fascism.
4. **What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Mack the Knife in The Threepenny Opera (1931 print version), Act III.
5. **Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Galileo in Life of Galileo, replying to «Unhappy the land that has no heroes!».
6. **He who doesn't know the truth is merely a fool. But he who knows it and calls it a lie is a criminal!** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Life of Galileo.
7. **Would it not be easier for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Poem «The Solution» after the uprising of 17 June 1953, Buckow Elegies.
8. **The toils of the mountains lie behind us, / before us lie the toils of the plains.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Poem «Perception» (1949).
9. **Whoever says A doesn't have to say B. He can also realise that A was wrong.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The boy in «He Who Says No» (1930).
10. **We stand here disappointed and see, dismayed, / the curtain closed and all the questions open.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Epilogue of «The Good Person of Szechwan».
11. **Go on, make yourself a plan, be a shining light! Then make yourself a second plan: neither will go right.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — «Song of the Insufficiency of Human Endeavour», The Threepenny Opera, Act III.
12. **My favourite reading? You'll laugh: the Bible.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Answer to a survey by the magazine «Die Dame» (1928).

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.