A Quote by Bertolt Brecht

When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’ it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up. — © Bertolt Brecht
When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’ it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.
Physicists and astronomers see their own implications in the world being round, but to me it means that only one-third of the world is asleep at any given time and the other two-thirds is up to something.
Now if there is any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best. But this question would perhaps be more appropriate to another inquiry; happiness seems, however, even if it is not god-sent but comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning and training, to be among the most god-like things; for that which is the prize and end of virtue seems to be the best thing in the world, and something god-like and blessed.
One of the things I like about doing science, the thing that is the most fun, is coming up with something that seems ridiculous when you first hear it but finally seems obvious when you're finished.
What do I believe in? Belief means faith, and there's only one damned thing in the world I have any faith in. That's the idea of American democracy, because it seems to me so obvious that that's the only sensible way to run human affairs.
So far I have been speaking of theoretical science, which is an attempt to understand the world. Practical science, which is an attempt to change the world, has been important from the first, and has continually increased in importance, until it has almost ousted theoretical science from men's thoughts.
Chaung Tzu was one of the most natural men the world has seen. He has not given any discipline, he has not given any doctrine, he has not given any catechism. He has simply explained one thing: that if you can be natural and ordinary, just like the birds and trees, you will blossom, you will have your wings open in the vast sky.
Of all the dear sights in the world, nothing is so beautiful as children when they are giving something. Any small thing they give. Children give the world to you. They open the world to you as if it were a book you'd never been able to read. But when a gift must be found, it is always some absurd little thing, passed on crooked. . . an angel looking like a clown. Children have so little that they can give, because they never know they have given you everything.
The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions - none more so than the most capable.
Buffon is fearless and has no obvious weaknesses. He has been outstanding for Juventus and was one of Italy's most important players at the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany, where they were victorious, but what is amazing is that he has been playing like that for years. He never seems to make a mistake.
The modern Western world is in many ways a sustained attempt to deal with the unintended and unwanted problems related to the disruptive fracturing of Christianity in the 16th and 17th centuries; We can't understand ourselves or our world in 2017 - or its increasingly obvious and grave problems, and just how deeply rooted they are - unless we understand how much they owe to attempts to deal with the problems derived from what started 500 years ago, in 1517.
Ask anyone what that means, what it means to see a miracle, and they will say that it's something impossible, but they mean that a miracle is something formerly believed to be impossible that turns out not to be, not to be impossible, in other words, but possible after all. If this were really true, then miracles would be the most ordinary things in the world, the most uninspiring things in the world, and what can one expect from people who have never been anything but ordinary and uninspired.
I think more to the point, these pivotal times means something other than a politician. I understand the economy. I understand the world. I have a lot of foreign policy experience. I understand bureaucracies. I understand technology, and I understand leadership.
I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.
I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.
If I see something that seems out of sync with what's already known, the first thing I do is try to find out what's wrong with the data. Once you've done that, and it still seems wrong, that's when things get interesting. It means you've found something new to understand.
It's the easiest thing in the world to assume that what seems so obvious at one moment in time is a hard, perpetual fact of life.
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