Every Man Dies Alone Quotes

“As it was, we all acted alone, we were caught alone, and every one of us will have to die alone. But that doesn’t mean that we are alone.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Not that she's a political animal, she's just an ordinary woman, but as a woman she's of the view that you don't bring children into the world to have them shot.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“It doesn't matter if one man fights or ten thousand; if the one man sees he has no option but to fight, then he will fight, whether he has others on his side or not.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“She had known for a long time that you had to pay for everything in life, and usually more than it was worth.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Everyone facing death, especially premature death, like us, will be kicking themselves about each wasted hour.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“I don't want any funny business, and above all I don't want to be dragged into other people's funny business. If it's to be my head on the block, I want to know that it's doing there, and not that it's some stupid things that other people have done.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Then he picked up the pen and said softly, but clearly, "The first sentence of our first card will read: Mother! The Führer has murdered my son."....At that instant she grasped that this very first sentence was Otto's absolute and irrevocable declaration of war, and also what that meant: war between, on the one side, the two of them, poor, small, insignificant workers who could be extinguished for just a word or two, and on the other, the Führer, the Party, the whole apparatus in all its power and glory, with three-fourths or even four-fifths of the German people behind it. And the two of them in this little room in Jablonski Strasse.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Sometimes Dr Reichhardt would say, ‘We live not for ourselves, but for others. What we make of ourselves we make not for ourselves, but for others…”
― Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin

“They had failed to understand that there was no such thing as private life in wartime Germany. No amount of reticence could change the fact that every individual German belonged to the generality of Germans and must share in the general destiny of Germany, even as more and more bombs were falling on the just and unjust alike.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Anna Quangel wishes she could stroke her husband's hand, but she doesn't dare. She just brushes it, as if by accident, and says, 'Oh, sorry, Otto!' He looks at her in surprise, but doesn't say anything. They walk on.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“It doesn't matter if there's a handful of you against many of them. Once you've seen that a cause is right, you're obliged to fight for it. Whether you ever live to see success, or the person who steps into your shoes does, it doesn't matter.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“. . . it will have helped us to feel that we have behaved decently till the end . . . we all acted alone, we were all caught alone, and every one of us will have to die alone. But that doesn't mean that we are alone, Quangel, or that our deaths will be in vain.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“We live not for ourselves, but for others. What we make of ourselves we make not for ourselves, but for others…”
― Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin

“Because it is written that you reap what you sow, and the boy had sown good corn.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Who wants to die?’ he asked. ‘Everyone wants to live, everyone – even the most miserable worm is screaming for life! I want to live, too. But maybe it’s a good thing, Anna, even in the midst of life to think of a wretched death, and to get ready for it. So that you know you’ll be able to die properly, without moaning and whimpering. That would be disgusting to me…”
― Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin

“The air was thick with betrayal. No one could trust anyone else, and in that dismal atmosphere the men seemed to grow even duller, devolving into mechanical extensions of the machines they serviced.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Imam gospodaricu koju sam dužan da slušam, ona vlada mnom, vama, svetom, čak i ovim današnjim svetom napolju, a ta gospodarica je pravda. U nju sam oduvek verovao, verujem i danas, i pravda je jedini putokaz mog postupanja...”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Would you rather live for an unjust cause than die for a just one? There is no choice—not for you, nor for me either. It’s because we are as we are that we have to go this way.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“But what can we do?’ Otto Quangel says, unnerved by this onslaught. ‘There are so few of us, and all those millions for him, and now, after the victory against France, there will be even more. We can do nothing!’ ‘We can do plenty!’ she whispers. ‘We can vandalize the machines, we can work badly, work slowly, we can tear down their posters and put up others where we tell people the truth about how they are being cheated and lied to.’ She drops her voice further: ‘But the main thing is that we remain different from them, that we never allow ourselves to be made into them, or start thinking as they do. Even if they conquer the whole world, we must refuse to become Nazis.”
― Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin

“everyone ought to be interested in politics. If we all had been, then maybe the Nazis wouldn’t have got their hands on power;”
― Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin

“Like many city dwellers, they'd had the mistaken belief that spying was only really bad in Berlin and that decency still prevailed in small towns. And like many city dwellers, they had made the painful discovery that recrimination, eavesdropping, and informing were ten times worse in the small towns than in the big city. In a small town everyone was fully exposed; you couldn't even disappear in the crowd.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Anna Quangel felt herself trembling. Then she looked over at Otto again. He might be right: whether their act was big or small, no one could risk more than his life. Each according to his strength and abilities, but the main thing was, you fought back. Still”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Das ist es ja, was ich immer sage: wir sind feige. Wir denken nur an das, was mit uns geschehen wird, nie an das, was den andern geschieht.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“it would have been a hundred times better if we’d had someone who could have told us, “Such and such is what you have to do; our plan is this and this.” But if there had been such a man in Germany, then Hitler would never have come to power in 1933. As it was, we all acted alone, we were caught alone, and every one of us will have to die alone. But that doesn’t mean that we are alone, Quangel, or that our deaths will be in vain. Nothing in this world is done in vain, and since we are fighting for justice against brutality, we are bound to prevail in the end.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“we were caught alone, and every one of us will have to die alone. But that doesn’t mean that we are alone, Quangel, or that our deaths will be in vain. Nothing in this world is done in vain, and since we are fighting for justice against brutality, we are bound to prevail in the end.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“As it was, we all acted alone,”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“You’re working in the employ of a murderer, delivering ever new victims to him. You do it for money; perhaps you don’t even believe in the man.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“It doesn’t matter if one man fights or ten thousand; if the one man sees he has no option but to fight, then he will fight, whether he has others on his side or not.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“You’re robbing mothers of their sons, wives of their husbands, girlfriends of their boyfriends, as long as you tolerate thousands being shot every day and don’t lift a finger to stop the killing.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Thoughts are free,” they said—but they ought to have known that in this State not even thoughts were free.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone