Words matter. These are the best Friedrich Durrenmatt Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
One does not set fire to a world which is already lost.
Man is imperfect. The reality he creates is always endangered by man.
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.
The difference between humans and wild animals is that humans pray before they commit murder.
Power is paradoxical.
The worst possible turn can not be programmed. It is caused by coincidence.
The only remedy against hunger is reasonable birth control.
Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands.
World history is tragic.
Above all, be suspicious of your fatherland. Nobody is more inclined to become a murderer than a fatherland.
The savages don’t have atom bombs.
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 rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual.
A state always calls itself fatherland when it is ready for murder.
It is easy to kill when you don’t see your victim.
In a society which is structured the wrong way, piety has no effect.
The freedom of each individual can only be the freedom of all.
Whoever is content with the world, and who profits from its lack of justice, does not want to change it.
Nothing that has been thought can ever be taken back.
I am a man, and God is hiding from us humans. We are unable to see Him, we can only search for Him.
Human life is beyond comprehension.
There are thoughts we must not think.
People like us who are on their last leg can only understand comedies.
News reports don’t change the world. Only facts change it, and those have already happened when we get the news.
Someone who is about to die does not mourn the dead.
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.
Emotions have no place in business, unless you do business with them.
We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior.
The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said.
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.
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.
For a person who is dying only eternity counts.
Everything in the world can be changed, my dear Florestan, but the human being.
Everything that is necessary is also easy. You just have to accept it. And the most necessary, the most natural matter on this planet is death.
This inhuman world has to become more humane. But how?
When death has you by the throat, you don’t mince words.
There are risks which are not acceptable: the destruction of humanity is one of them.
Religion and political expediency go beautifully hand in hand.
A story has been thought through to the end when it has taken the worst possible turn.
It is surely easier to confess a murder over a cup of coffee than in front of a jury.
