Best 79 quotes of Friedrich Durrenmatt on MyQuotes

Above all, be suspicious of your fatherland. Nobody is more inclined to become a murderer than a fatherland.

A major power can afford a military debacle only when it looks like a political victory.

A reasonable change of the world can not be instrumented by pure reason.

A state always calls itself fatherland when it is ready for murder.

A story has been thought to its conclusion when it has taken its worst possible turn.

A story is not finished, until it took the worst turn.

A world is in flames, and you are cracking silly jokes.

A writer doesn’t solve problems. He allows them to emerge.

Before anything else, we need a new age of Enlightenment. Our present political systems must relinquish their claims on truth, justice and freedom and have to replace them with the search for truth, justice, freedom and reason.

Communism is a proposition to structure the world more reasonably, a proposition for changing the world. As such, we have to analyze it and, if we deem it reasonable, act upon it.

Do we still have the right to be more than victims?

Every work of art depicts an aspect of reality.

For a person who is dying only eternity counts.

For people who have no critical acumen, a state is a mythical entity, for those who think critically it is a rational fiction, created by man in order to facilitate human coexistence.

He who confronts the paradoxical exposes himself to reality.

Human life is beyond comprehension.

Humans need justice in the here and now and grace in the thereafter. Justice in the here and now is possible only without freedom,and grace in the thereafter only through the freedom of God.

Humor is the mask of wisdom.

In a society which is structured the wrong way, piety has no effect.

In the United States the whites speak well of the Blacks but think bad about them, whereas the Blacks talk bad and think bad aboutthe whites. Whites fear Blacks, because they have a bad conscience, and Blacks hate whites because they need not have a bad conscience.

In this country, you never pull the emergency brake, even when there is an emergency. It is imperative that the trains run on schedule.

It is bad luck for world history that of all people the Russians adopted Communism, because they are totally unfit for it.

It is easy to kill when you don't see your victim

It is inhuman to continue a war which could easily be ended

It is only in love and murder that we still remain sincere.

It is surely easier to confess a murder over a cup of coffee than in front of a jury.

Man is imperfect. The reality he creates is always endangered by man.

News reports don't change the world. Only facts change it, and those have already happened when we get the news.

One does not set fire to a world which is already lost

Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands.

Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.

People like us who are on their last leg can only understand comedies.

Politics at all times lead to bloody wars, and not only politics, but also religions as well as social and economic systems of alltimes are spattered with blood. Invariably the big ones devoured the little ones, and the little ones the tiny ones.

Power is paradoxical.

Pretend to be dumb, that's the only way to reach old age.

Prior to the meeting, there was a prayer. In general, in the United States there was always praying.

Religion and political expediency go beautifully hand in hand

Resistance at all cost is the most senseless act there is.

Revolutions demand enormous sacrifices and, at the same time, create a new need to change the world again.

Rome has betrayed itself. It knew the truth and chose violence, it knew humaneness and it chose tyranny.

Someone who is about to die does not mourn the dead.

So then learn to conquer your fear. This is the only art we have to master nowadays: to look at things without fear, and to fearlessly do right.

The archetype of all humans, their ideal image, is the computer, once it has liberated itself from its creator, man. The computeris the essence of the human being. In the computer, man reaches his completion.

The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said.

The content of physics is the concern of physicists, its effect the concern of all men.

The difference between humans and wild animals is that humans pray before they commit murder.

The evolution of humans can not only be seen as the grand total of their wars; it is also defined by the evolution of the human mind and the development of the human consciousness.

The individual protests against the world, but he doesn't get beyond protest, he is just a single protester. When he wants to be more than that, he has to counter power with power, he has to oppose the system with another system.

Then the American flag was saluted. In general, in the United States people always salute the American flag.

The only remedy against hunger is reasonable birth control.