Peter Weiss quotes

What has gone wrong with
the men who are ruling
I'd like to know who
they think they are fooling
They told us that torture
was over and gone
but everyone knows
the same torture goes on. (Peter Weiss)

Fight on land and sea All men want to be free If they don't never mind we'll abolish all mankind.

Peter Weiss

Charlotte Corday walked alone Paris birds sang sugar calls Charlotte walked down lanes of stone through the haze of perfume stalls Charlotte smelt the dead's gangrene Heard the singing guillotine.

Peter Weiss

We're all so clogged with dead ideas passed from generation to generation that even the best of us don't know the way out We invented the Revolution but we don't know how to run it Look everyone wants to keep something from the past a souvenir of the old regime This man decides to keep a painting This one keeps his mistress He [pointing] keeps his garden He [pointing] keeps his estate He keeps his country house He keeps his factories This man couldn't part with his shipyards This one kept his army and that one keeps his king.

Peter Weiss

Against Nature's silence I use action In the vast indifference I invent a meaning I don't watch unmoved I intervene and say that this and this are wrong and I work to alter them and improve them The important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world with fresh eyes.

Peter Weiss

Don't soil your pretty little shoes The gutter's deep and red Climb up climb up and ride along with me the tumbrel driver saidBut she never said a word never turned her headDon't soil your pretty little pants I only go one way Climb up climb up and ride along with me There's no gold coach todayBut she never said a word never turned her head.

Peter Weiss

Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out Neither side is glorious On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing Not to lie under the earth but to walk upon it without crutches.

Peter Weiss

Don't be deceived when our Revolution has been finally stamped out and they tell you things are better now Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which these new industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you.

Peter Weiss

So the poor instead of bread made do with a picture of the bleeding scourged and nailed-up Christ and prayed to that image of their helplessness.

Peter Weiss

I could buy myself paper, a pen, a pencil and a brush and could create pictures whenever and wherever I wanted. ... That evening, in the spring of 1947, on the embankment of the Seine in Paris, at the age of thirty, I saw that it was possible to live and work in the world, and that I could participate in the exchange of ideas that was taking place all around, bound to no country.

Peter Weiss

Long ago I abandoned my masterpiece
a roll of paper thirty yards long
which I filled completely with minute handwriting
in my dungeon years ago
It vanished when the Bastille fell
it vanished as everything written
everything thought and planned
will disappear. (Peter Weiss)

We've got rights the right to starve We've got jobs waiting for work We're all brothers lousy and dirty We're all free and equal to die like dogs.

Peter Weiss

We can say what we like without favour or fear and what we can't say we can breathe in your ear.

Peter Weiss

What's the point of a revolution without general copulation copulation copulation.

Peter Weiss

In Dante the hero would rather flee and renounce the tempting embrace instead of yielding to his desires and enduring the attendant dangers.

Peter Weiss

I've twisted and turned them every way, And can see no ending to our play.

Peter Weiss

Only in his poetry did he have the courage to love.

Peter Weiss

And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice and they turned away their faces and said Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage The soul lives on humility and patience at the same time screwing from the poor their last centime They settled down among their treasures and ate and drank with princes and to the starving they said Suffer Suffer as he suffered on the cross for it is the will of God.

Peter Weiss

Singers: We've got nothing always had nothing nothing but holes and millions of them Kokol: Living in holes Polpoch: Dying in holes Cucurucu: Holes in our bellies Rossignol: and holes in our clothes.

Peter Weiss

Every death even the cruellest death drowns in the total indifference of Nature Nature herself would watch unmoved if we destroyed the entire human race I hate Nature this passionless spectator this unbreakable iceberg-face that can bear everything this goads us to greater and greater acts.

Peter Weiss

And now Marat
now I see where
this revolution is heading
To the withering of the individual man
and a slow merging into uniformity
to the death of choice
to self denial
to deadly weakness
in a state
which has no contract with individuals
but which is impregnable. (Peter Weiss)

Marat Today they need you because you are going to suffer for them They need you and they honour the urn which holds your ashes Tomorrow they will come back and smash that urn and they will ask Marat who was Marat.

Peter Weiss

Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits Great propositions and their opposites, See how they work, and let them fight it out, To point some light on our eternal doubt. Marat and I both advocated force But in debate each took a different course. Both wanted changes, but his views and mine On using power never could combine. On the one side, he who thinks our lives Can be improved by axes and knives, Or he who, submerged in the imagination, Seeking a personal annihilation.

Peter Weiss