The right to happiness is fundamental; men live so little time and die alone.
Interpretation
Happiness is a basic human right, and since life is short, we should seek it amidst our solitude.
Bertolt Brecht emphasizes the importance of happiness as an essential right for individuals. He reflects on the brevity of life and the inherent solitude that accompanies the human experience, urging us to prioritize the pursuit of happiness while we can, understanding its fundamental necessity in our short-lived existence.
In practice
During a motivational speech about the importance of pursuing happiness.
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.
Short is the joy that guilty pleasure brings.
Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within. The heavier the lashing of the rain and the ghastlier the details, the better the flavour seems to be.
If you equate happiness with success, you will never achieve the amount of success necessary to make you happy.
Happiness does not come from without, it comes from within
To forget oneself is to be happy.
To me, the message of my songs, of all songs, is "enjoy life." My message as a person who evidently doens't have much more planned is the same. It's the only message I ever thought art had any business having.
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