...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.
I have no argument with those who see in organized religion a template or an imperative to live life according to a prescribed set of beliefs. Just give others the room, within the laws of civil society, to believe or not believe whatever they like.
...quality of life lies in knowledge, in culture. Values are what constitute true quality of life, the supreme quality of life, even above food, shelter and clothing.
The revealed and mystic literature of mankind bears ample testimony to the fact that religious experience has been too enduring and dominant in the history of mankind to be rejected as mere illusion. There seems to be no reason, then, to accept the normal level of human experience as fact and reject its other levels as mystical and emotional.
One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.
Sometimes, surely, truth is closer to imagination or to intelligence, to love than to fact? To be accurate is not to be right.
How we experience memory sometimes, it's not linear. We're not telling the stories to ourselves. We know the story; we're just seeing it in flashes overlaid.
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