Life & Wisdom Quote by Bertolt Brecht

Brecht’s line cuts against the smug, schoolroom version of “intelligence” as spotless correctness. He reframes it as improvisation under pressure: not the absence of error, but the speed and ingenuity with which you convert error into something usable. That pivot from purity to salvage is classic Brecht - suspicious of bourgeois respectability, allergic to the idea that competence is quiet and invisible. In his world, systems fail, people blunder, and the only truly unforgivable sin is pretending otherwise.

The phrasing is deceptively plain: “make them good” sounds almost domestic, like mending a torn sleeve. It’s also slyly political. Brecht wrote in a century where mistakes weren’t trivial - they were choices made in revolutions, in exile, in war, under censorship, under regimes that demanded ideological perfection. By insisting that intelligence includes repair, he smuggles in a tougher ethic: accountability without paralysis. You don’t get to be innocent; you get to be responsive.

There’s an artistic subtext, too. Brecht’s theater is built on visible seams: scenes that interrupt themselves, actors who step out of character, songs that comment on the action. The point isn’t seamless illusion; it’s conscious adjustment. “Quickly to see” is the Brechtian skill - the critical distance to recognize what’s happening, then reshape it. Intelligence, here, is less a high IQ than a survival craft: clear-eyed, unsentimental, and relentlessly practical.