Quote of the Day: Bertolt Brecht on Love

Early November carries a particular tension: the year is closing, but the work isn’t. The light thins, routines tighten, and whatever we’ve been avoiding has more room to echo. It’s a season that reveals what persists beneath our plans, what keeps returning, clever and patient. “War is like love; it always finds a way.”

Brecht’s line isn’t romance; it’s a diagnostic. Love and war are both engines of improvisation. They leap fences, reroute around rules, and recruit language to justify the detour. That’s useful to remember when you’re trying to change: whatever you feed, attention, money, story, praise, will keep finding pathways through your life.

So apply the quote in reverse. If conflict “finds a way,” look for the paths you’re accidentally clearing: outrage as entertainment, loyalty turned into hostility, ambition dressed as righteousness. The antidote isn’t naïve optimism; it’s design. Remove the shortcuts that escalate small frictions into battles: pause before replying, reduce the audience for your anger, swap certainty for a question. Build channels where devotion can travel without domination, where love “finds a way” that doesn’t conquer. That’s leadership at the personal scale, and resilience in real time.

Bertolt Brecht earned his authority by refusing comforting myths, pioneering Epic Theatre and writing works like Mother Courage and Her Children that expose how institutions, profit, and ideology rehearse catastrophe until it feels inevitable.

Today, pick one arena where you feel a low-grade war brewing, your inbox, your home, your team, and do one concrete act of de-escalation: write the calmer message, name the shared goal, or take a five-minute walk before you speak. Clear the path for what you want to grow, and let peace find its way through you.