Top 97 Quotes & Sayings by Friedrich Durrenmatt - Page 2

What concerns everyone can only be resolved by everyone.

We are not cave dwellers anymore, we live in the age of technology. When someone needs a car, he does not need to build it. He can buy it. When someone needs a murder, he himself does not need to kill. He can order it.

There is also a reasonable tolerance: reason tolerates the reasonable. It is, however, almost tautological to call this 'tolerance' any longer, as it becomes a matter of course.

There are thoughts we must not think

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

Every work of art depicts an aspect of reality.

As the Americans slaughter millions of turkeys every year for the celebration of their deliverance, the Indians, who should be celebrated as saviors, have long been slaughtered. There was even a time when a white man was paid a very decent price for every Indian scalp he could produce.

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

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

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

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

Religion and political expediency go beautifully hand in hand

Nothing that has been thought can ever be taken back

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

That there is also freedom in captivity, only a prisoner can claim. Coming from a prison guard, this statement would be blasphemy.

He who confronts the paradoxical exposes himself to reality.

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

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.

To not be afraid in our world is the message that doesn't derive from reason, but maybe from this mysterious capacity given to humans which we call--not without a little embarrassment--faith.

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.

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

The planet on which we live is poorly organized, many areas are overpopulated, others are reserved for a few, technology's potential is only in part realized, and most people are starving.

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

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

There are risks which are not acceptable: the destruction of humanity is one of them

I am a man, and God is hiding from us humans. We are unable to see Him, we can only search for Him

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

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.

To make the essence of man visible in the exposure is the highest art of photography.

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.

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.

We can't afford the wrath of Heaven. We survived a deluge by the skin of our teeth, but an economic crisis would be disastrous.

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

What the world needs is not redemption from sin but redemption from hunger and oppression; it has no need to pin its hopes upon Heaven, it has everything to hope for from this earth.

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

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

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