Ernst Toller Quotes

We revolutionaries acknowledge the right to revolution when we see that the situation is no longer tolerable, that it has become a frozen. Then we have the right to overthrow it.

Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. What separated a German mother from a French mother?

And suddenly, like light in darkness, the real truth broke in upon me; the simple fact of Man, which I had forgotten, which had lain deep buried and out of sight; the idea of community, of unity.

I was at the front for thirteen months, and by the end of that time the sharpest perceptions had become dulled, the greatest words mean.

In a quiet Franciscan monastery kind and silent monks looked after me. After many weeks I was discharged. Unfit for further service.

Soldiers and peasants lived together on friendly terms; they knew each other and their everyday routines, and trusted each other; they shook their heads together over the war.

The working class will not halt until socialism has been realized.

The revolution is like a vessel filled with the pulsating heartbeat of millions of working people.

Slogans which deafened us so that we could not hear the truth.

I saw the dead without really seeing them.

As a rule, people are afraid of truth. Each truth we discover in nature or social life, destroys the crutches on which we need to lean.

How happy I am to go to the front at last. To do my bit. To prove with my life what I think I feel.

The French got enough from the Germans to save them from starvation; but many a woman sold herself for a loaf or a chunk of sausage.