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.

  Ernst Toller

  Frozen, Revolution, Situation

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ernst Toller

  People, Needs, Social

  5 Copy quote

• 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?

  Ernst Toller

  Mother, Suffering Of Others, People

  Ernst Toller (1937). “Look Through the Bars: Letters from Prison, Poems, and a New Version of "The Swallow Book"”

  8 Copy quote

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

  Ernst Toller

  Truth, Slogans

  6 Copy quote

• I saw the dead without really seeing them.

  Ernst Toller

  Saws, Seeing

  Ernst Toller (1934). “I was a German: the autobiography of Ernst Toller”

  6 Copy quote

• At that moment of realization I knew that I had been blind because I had wished not to see; it was only then that I realised, at last, that all these dead men, French and Germans, were brothers, and I was the brother of them all.

  Ernst Toller

  Brother, Men, Realization

  Ernst Toller (1934). “I was a German: An Autobiography”

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ernst Toller

  Mean, Perception, Months

  Ernst Toller (1934). “I was a German: the autobiography of Ernst Toller”

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ernst Toller

  Truth, Real, Simple

  Ernst Toller (1934). “I was a German: the autobiography of Ernst Toller”

  8 Copy quote

• As a boy I used to go to the Chamber of Horrors at the annual fair, to look at the wax figures of Emperors and Kings, of heroes and murderers of the day. The dead now had that same unreality, which shocks without arousing pity.

  Ernst Toller

  Kings, Hero, Boys

  Ernst Toller (1934). “I was a German: the autobiography of Ernst Toller”

  8 Copy quote

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

  Ernst Toller

  Quiet, Kind, Silent

  Ernst Toller (1934). “I was a German: the autobiography of Ernst Toller”

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ernst Toller

  Life, Thinking, Inspire

  4 Copy quote

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

  Ernst Toller

  People, Revolution, Heartbeat

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ernst Toller

  Sausage, Enough, Starvation

  Ernst Toller (1934). “I was a German: the autobiography of Ernst Toller”

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ernst Toller

  War, Everyday Routine, Soldier

  Ernst Toller (1934). “I was a German: The Autobiography of a Revolutionary”, Paragon House Publishers

  7 Copy quote

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

  Ernst Toller

  Eugenics, Class, Socialism

  7 Copy quote

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