Kathe Kollwitz Quotes

Every war carries within it the war which will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything, everything is smashed.

It is my duty to voice the sufferings of humankind, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain high. This is my task, but it is not an easy one to fulfill.

I can always paint very well with my eyes, but with my hands it doesn't always work out.

I do not want to die... until I have faithfully made the most of my talent and cultivated the seed that was placed in me, until the last small twig has grown.

Where do all the women who have watched so carefully over the lives of their beloved ones get the heroism to send them to face the cannon?

I was put in this world to change it.

I thought I was a revolutionary and was only an evolutionary.

There are moments on most days when I feel a deep and sincere gratitude, when I sit at the open window, and there is a blue sky or moving clouds.

I have never been able to carry out any work coolly. On the contrary it is done, so to speak, with my own blood. Anyone who looks at my works must be able to sense that.

While I drew, and wept along with the terrified children I was drawing, I really felt the burden I am bearing. I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate.

When Michelangelo was an old man, he drew himself sitting in a child's pushcart.

It seems to me nowadays that the most important task for someone who is aging is to spread love and warmth whenever possible.

If all the people who have been hurt by the war were to exclude joy from their lives, it would almost be as if they had died.

Look at life with the eyes of a child.

No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes.

Bisexuality is almost a necessary factor in artistic production; at any rate, the tinge of masculinity within me helped me in my work.

I am afraid of dying-but being dead, oh yes, that to me is often an appealing prospect.

I am in the world to change the world.

The development of the national spirit in its present form leads into blind alleys. Some condition must be found which preserves the life of the nation, but rules out the fatal rivalry among nations.

Growing old is partly an inescapable process of accommodation and adjustment.

Pacifism simply is not a matter of calm looking on; it is work, hard work.

To this day I do not know whether the power which has inspired my works is something related to religion, or is indeed religion itself.

Men without joy seem like corpses.

For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating rejuvenating exciting and satisfying.