Quotes By Friedrich Durrenmatt

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

Religion and political expediency go beautifully hand in hand.

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

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

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

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

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.

Nothing that has been thought can ever be taken back.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

There are thoughts we must not think.

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