The shrill voices of those who give orders Are full of fear like the squeakings of Piglets awaiting the butcher's knife, as their fat arses Sweat with anxiety in their office chairs.... Fear rules not only those who are ruled, but The rulers too.
Interpretation
This quote illustrates that fear is a powerful force affecting both the oppressed and those in power.
Bertolt Brecht highlights the paradox of power, suggesting that the anxiety and fear experienced by those who hold authority can be as intense as that felt by their subordinates. The imagery of piglets fearing for their lives vividly underscores how fear permeates all levels of society, influencing decisions and actions regardless of one's position.
In practice
In a speech about leadership, one might use this quote to illustrate how leadership can be stifled by fear.
We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.
We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.
War is like love, it always finds a way.
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
Recently my fingers have developed a prejudice against comparatives. They all follow this pattern: a squirrel is smaller than a tree; a bird is more musical than a tree. Each of us is the strongest one in his or her own skin. Characteristics should take off their hats to one another, instead of spitting in each other's faces.
To those who does not know the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.
Play is the exultation of the possible.
Do not surrender your grief so quickly Let it cut more deeply Let it ferment and season you As few human or divine ingredients can Something is missing in my heart tonight That has made my eyes so soft And my voice so tender And my need of God so absolutely clear.
This freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society, setting us apart. Like the right of assembly and the right of association, it often makes all other rights meaningful-knowing, studying, arguing, exploring, conversing, observing and even thinking. Once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer, just as when curfew or home detention is placed on a person.
She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything.
Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.
A world in which there are monsters, and ghosts, and things that want to steal your heart is a world in which there are angels, and dreams and a world in which there is hope.
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