Friedrich Durrenmatt Quotes

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

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 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.

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

Humor is the mask of wisdom.

Religion and political expediency go beautifully hand in hand

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

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

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

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.

It is surely easier to confess a murder over a cup of coffee than in front of a jury.

That there is also freedom in captivity, only a prisoner can claim. Coming from a prison guard, this statement would be blasphemy.

There are risks which are not acceptable: the destruction of humanity is one of them

The content of physics is the concern of physicists, its effect the concern of all men.

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

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.

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

The savages don't have atom bombs.

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

It is only in love and murder that we still remain sincere.

A writer doesn’t solve problems. He allows them to emerge.

Without tolerance, our world turns into hell.

We are not cave dwellers anymore, we live in the age of technology. When someone needs a car, he does not need to build it. He can buy it. When someone needs a murder, he himself does not need to kill. He can order it.

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

To not be afraid in our world is the message that doesn't derive from reason, but maybe from this mysterious capacity given to humans which we call--not without a little embarrassment--faith.

In this country, you never pull the emergency brake, even when there is an emergency. It is imperative that the trains run on schedule.

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.

He who confronts the paradoxical exposes himself to reality.

For a person who is dying only eternity counts.

What the world needs is not redemption from sin but redemption from hunger and oppression; it has no need to pin its hopes upon Heaven, it has everything to hope for from this earth.

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

It is bad luck for world history that of all people the Russians adopted Communism, because they are totally unfit for it.

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

Truth is always a delusion.

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

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

A story has been thought to its conclusion when it has taken its worst possible turn.

Human life is beyond comprehension.

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

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

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

The planet on which we live is poorly organized, many areas are overpopulated, others are reserved for a few, technology's potential is only in part realized, and most people are starving.

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

World history is tragic.

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

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

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

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.

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

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