One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the distinction between a person's true self and their public persona.
Bertolt Brecht implies that individuals often confuse the representation of a person in media or art with their actual existence and voice. This suggests a deeper philosophical observation about identity and perception, urging us to recognize that what we see and hear may not fully encapsulate a person's true essence.
In practice
During a lecture on media influence, this quote can illustrate how public figures are presented versus their real lives.
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.
Stated baldly, charity certainly means one of two things–pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people.
The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps persuadable, which one may call life in general.
We used to say poor people had lousy genes. Then we decided that wasn't OK, but we transferred the prejudice to upbringing. We said, 'You were neglected as a child, so you'll never make it.' That's just as pernicious.
The true Christian is like sandalwood, which imparts its fragrance to the axe which cuts it, without doing any harm in return.
The man who enters his wife's dressing room is either a philosopher or a fool.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
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