Peter Weiss Quotes

“Every death even the cruelest death
drowns in the total indifference of Nature
Nature herself would watch unmoved
if we destroyed the entire human race
I hate Nature
this passionless spectator this unbreakable iceberg-face
that can bear everything
this goads us to greater and greater acts”

— Peter Weiss

We're all free and equal to die like dogs

— Peter Weiss

“Long ago I left heroics to the heroes”

— Peter Weiss

What's the point of a revolution
without general
copulation copulation copulation

— 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.”

— Peter Weiss

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

— Peter Weiss

We're all so clogged with dead ideas passed from generation to generation that even the best of us don't know the way out.

— Peter Weiss

“The important thing
is to pull yourself up by your own hair
to turn yourself inside out
and see the whole world with fresh eyes.”

— Peter Weiss

“Don't be deceived when our Revolution has been finally stamped out and they tell you things are better now Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which these new industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you”

— Peter Weiss

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

— Peter Weiss

“Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out. Niether side is glorious. On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing - not to lie under theearth, but to walk upon it - without crutches.”

— Peter Weiss

“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.”

— Peter Weiss

“Something unfathomable lies behind every thought ... something for which there aren't any words.”

— Peter Weiss

“What has gone wrong with the men who are ruling I'd like to know who they think they are fooling They told us that torture was over and gone but everyone knows the same torture goes on”

— Peter Weiss

“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”

— Peter Weiss

“Don't soil your pretty little shoes The gutter's deep and red Climb up climb up and ride along with me the tumbrel driver said But she never said a word never turned her head Don't soil your pretty little pants I only go one way Climb up climb up and ride along with me There's no gold coach today But she never said a word never turned her head”

— Peter Weiss

“In Dante the hero would rather flee and renounce the tempting embrace instead of yielding to his desires and enduring the attendant dangers.”

— Peter Weiss

Fight on land and sea All men want to be free If they don't never mind we'll abolish all mankind

— Peter Weiss

“I could buy myself paper, a pen, a pencil and a brush and could create pictures whenever and wherever I wanted ... That evening, in the spring of 1947, on the embankment of the Seine in Paris, at the age of thirty, I saw that it was possible to live and work in the world, and that I could participate in the exchange of ideas that was taking place all around, bound to no country.”

— Peter Weiss

“However hard we try to bring in the new; it comes into being only in the midst of clumsy deals.”

— Peter Weiss

“Nature supplies the game of chess with its implements; science with its system; art with its aesthetic arrangement of its problems; and God endows it with its blessed power of making people happy.”

— Peter Weiss

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.

— Peter Weiss

“We can say what we like without favour or fear and what we can't say we can breathe in your ear”

— Peter Weiss

“Charlotte Corday walked alone Paris birds sang sugar calls Charlotte walked down lanes of stone through the haze of perfume stalls Charlotte smelt the dead's gangrene Heard the singing guillotine”

— Peter Weiss

Long ago I abandoned my masterpiece a roll of paper thirty yards long which I filled completely with minute handwriting in my dungeon years ago It vanished when the Bastille fell it vanished as everything written everything thought and planned will disappear

— Peter Weiss