Quotes By Friedrich Durrenmatt

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

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

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

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

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

Justice is horrible.

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

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.

In a society which is structured the wrong way, piety has no effect.

When death has you by the throat, you don't mince words.

Nothing that has been thought can ever be taken back.

The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said.

The rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual.

Human life is beyond comprehension.

Who sows fear, reaps weapons.

Truth is always a delusion.

Power is paradoxical.

For people who have no critical acumen, a state is a mythical entity, for those who think critically it is a rational fiction, created by man in order to facilitate human coexistence.

Whoever is content with the world, and who profits from its lack of justice, does not want to change it.

The worst possible turn can not be programmed. It is caused by coincidence.

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

For a person who is dying only eternity counts.

Without tolerance, our world turns into hell.

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.

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

World history is tragic.

There are thoughts we must not think.