FRIEDRICH DURRENMATT

The only remedy against hunger is reasonable birth control.

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

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

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.

The savages don't have atom bombs.

For a person who is dying only eternity counts.

So then learn to conquer your fear. This is the only art we have to master nowadays: to look at things without fear, and to fearlessly do right.

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

We are the world.

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

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

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

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

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.

Justice is horrible.

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

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

Power is paradoxical.

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

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

Nothing that has been thought can ever be taken back.

Religion and political expediency go beautifully hand in hand.

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

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

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