Life & Wisdom Quote by Bertolt Brecht

Revolution always sounds cleanest in the draft. Brecht’s line needles the romance of “the plan” by dragging it back into the stubborn, petty reality of people. The phrase “the littleness of them” is doing double duty: it’s a moral judgment (smallness of spirit, cowardice, vanity) and a structural diagnosis (ordinary incentives, bureaucratic inertia, factional feuds). Grand designs don’t fail only because the enemy is strong; they fail because the would-be builders are human, and humans are often mean, self-protective, and easily distracted.

That sting lands harder because Brecht adds “Even emperors can’t do it all by themselves,” a jab at the fantasy of the singular genius-leader. It’s anti-heroic in the most Brechtian way: history isn’t driven by lone greatness but by messy collectives. An emperor is the ultimate symbol of concentrated power, yet even he is dependent on clerks, soldiers, courtiers, and functionaries - the very ecosystem where “littleness” breeds. The subtext is political: if tyranny needs a thousand hands to function, so does liberation. You don’t just need the right idea; you need a cadre capable of carrying it without shrinking it.

Context matters. Brecht wrote in the shadow of fascism, exile, and the compromises of leftist movements under pressure. He knew how easily noble rhetoric curdles into careerism, how quickly solidarity fractures. The line isn’t despairing so much as bracing: stop worshipping plans and start building people and systems sturdy enough to execute them.