...it is simplicity that is difficult to make.
Interpretation
Simplicity requires effort and skill to achieve, contrary to the belief that it is easy.
Bertolt Brecht's quote emphasizes the notion that creating something simple often demands a deep understanding and careful thought. In a world that frequently values complexity, he points out that true simplicity is a challenging, yet profound goal that requires significant effort and creativity to attain.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture on design principles to emphasize the value of simplicity in creating effective solutions.
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.
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.
One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles.
Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don't struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality.
The history of our spiritual life is a continuing search for the unity between ourselves and the world. Religion, art, and science follow, one and all, this aim.
We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery.
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