For time is short and the unknown surrounds us; and it isn’t enough just to live unthinking and happy, calmly bearing oppression and only learning wisdom with age.
Then I’ll go on, get it off my chest. It all starts with yours truly growing up in lovely Flanders, else I’d never of seen him and wouldn’t be stuck here now in Poland, cause he was an army cook, fair-haired, a Dutchman but thin for once. Kattrin, watch out for the thin ones, only in those days I didn’t know that, or that he’d got a girl already, or that they all called him Puffing Piet cause he never took out his pipe out of his mouth when he was on the job, it meant that little to him.
And I did work out something: that the rich of the earth indeed create misery, but they cannot bear to see it. They are weaklings and fools just like you. As long as they have enough to eat and can grease their floors with butter so that even the crumbs that fall from your table grow fat, they can’t look with indifference on a man collapsing from hunger – although, of course, it must be in front of their house that he collapses.
You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy, but till you feed us right and wrong can wait. Or is it only those who have the money who can enter the land of milk and honey?
For the wickedness of the world is so great you have to run your legs off in order to avoid having them stolen from under you.
I can’t abide injustice.
They’ve filed down whatever edges we used to have.
He’ll never be conquered, that man, and you know why? We all back him up – the little fellows like you and me. Oh yes, to hear the big fellows talk, they ’re fighting for their beliefs and so on, but if you look into it, you find they’re not that silly: they do want to make a profit on the deal. So you and I back them up! COOK.
I discovered our dear poet in my office, a simple clerk.
Sometimes I see myself driving through hell with this wagon and selling brimstone. And sometimes I’m driving through heaven handing our provisions to wandering souls! If only we could find a place where there’s no shooting, me and my children – what’s left of ‘em – we might rest a while.
All I get from your victory is losses.
He says he’d like to kiss the ground you walk on-reminds me, did you wash them yesterday?- and after that you’re his skivvy.
Singer: It may be a mistake to mix different wines, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.
Where else are you going to get morality from, is what I say? Peace is just piggishness, it takes war to establish order.
If there are obstacles, the shortest line between two points may be the crooked one.
Those who are against Fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf.
Stupidity isn’t invincible.
The noblest plans are brought down through the low-mindedness of those who are supposed to carry them out.
Facts are facts, whisper them or shout them.
If you stuffed a ship full to bursting point with human bodies, there would be such loneliness that they would all freeze.
The most important thing is to learn to think crudely. Crude thinking is the thinking of great men.