1.
A state always calls itself fatherland when it is ready for murder.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
2.
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.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
3.
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.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
4.
The world is bad but not without hope. It is only hopeless when you look at it from an ideal viewpoint.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
5.
Humor is the mask of wisdom.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
6.
Religion and political expediency go beautifully hand in hand
Friedrich Durrenmatt
7.
News reports don't change the world. Only facts change it, and those have already happened when we get the news.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
8.
The difference between humans and wild animals is that humans pray before they commit murder.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
9.
Above all, be suspicious of your fatherland. Nobody is more inclined to become a murderer than a fatherland.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
10.
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.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
11.
It is surely easier to confess a murder over a cup of coffee than in front of a jury.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
12.
That there is also freedom in captivity, only a prisoner can claim. Coming from a prison guard, this statement would be blasphemy.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
13.
There are risks which are not acceptable: the destruction of humanity is one of them
Friedrich Durrenmatt
14.
The content of physics is the concern of physicists, its effect the concern of all men.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
15.
The worst possible turn can not be programmed. It is caused by coincidence.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
16.
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.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
17.
One does not set fire to a world which is already lost
Friedrich Durrenmatt
18.
The savages don't have atom bombs.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
19.
The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
20.
It is only in love and murder that we still remain sincere.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
21.
A writer doesn’t solve problems. He allows them to emerge.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
22.
Without tolerance, our world turns into hell.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
23.
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.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
24.
Resistance at all cost is the most senseless act there is.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
25.
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.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
26.
In this country, you never pull the emergency brake, even when there is an emergency. It is imperative that the trains run on schedule.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
27.
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.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
28.
He who confronts the paradoxical exposes himself to reality.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
29.
For a person who is dying only eternity counts.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
30.
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.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
31.
Emotions have no place in business, unless you do business with them.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
32.
It is bad luck for world history that of all people the Russians adopted Communism, because they are totally unfit for it.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
33.
Revolutions demand enormous sacrifices and, at the same time, create a new need to change the world again.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
34.
Truth is always a delusion.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
35.
It is inhuman to continue a war which could easily be ended
Friedrich Durrenmatt
36.
This inhuman world has to become more humane. But how?
Friedrich Durrenmatt
37.
A story has been thought to its conclusion when it has taken its worst possible turn.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
38.
Human life is beyond comprehension.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
39.
We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
40.
The rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
41.
People like us who are on their last leg can only understand comedies.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
42.
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.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
43.
There is a moment when nothing can be wiped out and left behind any more, when there is only reality and reality is horrifying.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
44.
World history is tragic.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
45.
Someone who is about to die does not mourn the dead.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
46.
A major power can afford a military debacle only when it looks like a political victory.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
47.
When death has you by the throat, you don't mince words.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
48.
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.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
49.
Whoever is content with the world, and who profits from its lack of justice, does not want to change it.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
50.
In a society which is structured the wrong way, piety has no effect.
Friedrich Durrenmatt