Peter Weiss

Quotes by Peter Weiss

• Don't be taken in when they pat you paternally on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason for fighting. Because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretense of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons rapidly developed by servile scientists will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you into pieces.

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• And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice and they turned their faces away and said, 'Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world. Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage. The soul lives on humility and patience,' at the same time screwing the poor from their last centime. They settled down among their treasures and ate and drank with princes and to the starving they said, 'Suffer. Suffer as he suffered on the cross for it is the will of God.'And anyone believes what they hear over and over again, so the poor instead of bread made do with a picture of the bleeding, scourged, and nailed-up Christ and prayed to that image of their helplessness. And the priests said, 'Raise your hands to heaven and bend your knees and bear your suffering without complaint. Pray for those that torture you, for prayer and blessing are the only stairways which you can climb to paradise.'And so they chained down the poor in their ignorance so that they wouldn't stand up and fight their bosses who ruled in the name of the lie of divine right.

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• Every death even the cruelest deathdrowns in the total indifference of NatureNature herself would watch unmovedif we destroyed the entire human raceI hate Naturethis passionless spectator this unbreakable iceberg-facethat can bear everythingthis goads us to greater and greater acts

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• With the plundered people transferring their energies into relaxed and receptive thoughts, degradation and lust for power produced art.

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• Once and for allthe idea of glorious victorieswon by the glorious armymust be wiped outNeither side is gloriousOn either side they're just frightened men messing their pantsand they all want the same thingNot to lie under the earthbut to walk upon itwithout crutches(Roux, act 1, scene 19)

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• Every death even the cruelest deathdrowns in the total indifference of NatureNature herself would watch unmovedif we destroyed the entire human raceI hate Naturethis passionless spectator this unbreakable iceberg-facethat can bear everythingthis goads us to greater and greater acts

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• Once and for allthe idea of glorious victorieswon by the glorious armymust be wiped outNeither side is gloriousOn either side they're just frightened men messing their pantsand they all want the same thingNot to lie under the earthbut to walk upon itwithout crutches(Roux, act 1, scene 19)

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• Don't be taken in when they pat you paternally on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason for fighting. Because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretense of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons rapidly developed by servile scientists will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you into pieces.

  Read quote

• With the plundered people transferring their energies into relaxed and receptive thoughts, degradation and lust for power produced art.

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• And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice and they turned their faces away and said, 'Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world. Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage. The soul lives on humility and patience,' at the same time screwing the poor from their last centime. They settled down among their treasures and ate and drank with princes and to the starving they said, 'Suffer. Suffer as he suffered on the cross for it is the will of God.'And anyone believes what they hear over and over again, so the poor instead of bread made do with a picture of the bleeding, scourged, and nailed-up Christ and prayed to that image of their helplessness. And the priests said, 'Raise your hands to heaven and bend your knees and bear your suffering without complaint. Pray for those that torture you, for prayer and blessing are the only stairways which you can climb to paradise.'And so they chained down the poor in their ignorance so that they wouldn't stand up and fight their bosses who ruled in the name of the lie of divine right.

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• Woe to the man who tries to stretch the imagination of man He shall be mocked he shall be scourged by the blinkered guardians of morality.

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• The only truths we can point to are the ever-changing truths of our own experience.

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• Once we thought a few hundred corpses would be enough then we saw thousands were still too few and today we can't even count all the dead Everywhere you look.

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