ACTUALLY, I PREFER the dynamic equivalent translation I heard in a production of Happy End sometime in the 70s or 80s, "Knockin' over a bank's no crime compared to ownin' one." Like Raymond Chandler, I'll give this much to Brecht, he could write a really great line that was true, even if the total effect of his work is anything from nonsense to the equivalent of Springtime For Hitler.
It's one of the tragedies of Marx and Marxism that they didn't stick to the part of it that was spot on accurate, his critique of capitalism and leave the really horrible part of it, his prescriptions for an alternative that he claimed was scientifically inevitable in the garbage can of history. Marx the critic was a great man, Marx the constructor of the future was the author of something that was from as bad to far worse.
Update: You know, I'm kind of disappointed that no one pointed out I mixed up the name of the somewhat obscure and forgotten American composer Theodore Chandler with the over-rated gumshoe novelist, the master of the snappy one liner and not really a master of much else, Raymond Chandler while typing. It was the later who I would have compared to Brecht had I not made that mistake after a largely sleepless night.
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