Never believe on faith, see for yourself! What you yourself don't learn you don't know.

I don't like where I'm going and I don't like where I've been. Why am I in a hurry?

Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life.

Art and science work in quite different ways: agreed. But, bad as it may sound, I have to admit that I cannot get along as an artist without the use of one or two sciences. ... In my view, the great and complicated things that go on in the world cannot be adequately recognized by people who do not use every possible aid to understanding.

I was called up in the war and sent to a hospital. I dressed wounds, applied iodine, gave enemas, did blood transfusions. If the doctor ordered: "Brecht, amputate a leg!", I would reply, "Certainly, Your Excellency!", and cut off the leg. If I was told, "Perform a trepanning!" I opened the man's skull and messed about with his brains. I saw how they patched fellows up, so as to cart them back to the Front as quickly as they could.

The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.

Poverty makes you wise but it's a curse.