Quotes By Friedrich Durrenmatt

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

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

The world is bad but not without hope. It is only hopeless when you look at it from an ideal viewpoint.

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

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

Today's Communism can survive only if it abandons the myth of an infallible party, if it continues to think, and if it becomes democratic.

The savages don't have atom bombs.

We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior.

This inhuman world has to become more humane. But how?

Emotions have no place in business, unless you do business with them.

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

A story has been thought through to the end when it has taken the worst possible turn.

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

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

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

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 only remedy against hunger is reasonable birth control.

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.

Everything in the world can be changed, my dear Florestan, but the human being.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

There is a moment when nothing can be wiped out and left behind any more, when there is only reality and reality is horrifying.

Justice is horrible.

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

Today's difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal.