What kind of times are they, when A talk about trees is almost a crime Because it implies silence about so many horrors?
Interpretation
The quote expresses concern about societal issues being ignored in favor of trivial topics.
Bertolt Brecht's quote highlights a profound societal critique, suggesting that discussing nature, represented by trees, is seen as inappropriate during times filled with significant human suffering and injustice. It implies that focusing on such peaceful subjects can detract from the urgent need to address the horrors that are occurring, thus reflecting a moral dilemma about the responsibilities of individuals in acknowledging and confronting social issues.
In practice
In a speech about environmental conservation, one might reference this quote to emphasize the urgency of addressing both ecological and social issues.
The shrill voices of those who give orders Are full of fear like the squeakings of Piglets awaiting the butcher's knife, as their fat arses Sweat with anxiety in their office chairs.... Fear rules not only those who are ruled, but The rulers too.
We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.
We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.
War is like love, it always finds a way.
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
Recently my fingers have developed a prejudice against comparatives. They all follow this pattern: a squirrel is smaller than a tree; a bird is more musical than a tree. Each of us is the strongest one in his or her own skin. Characteristics should take off their hats to one another, instead of spitting in each other's faces.
Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut.
I urge you to sin. But not against these itty-bitty religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism-or their secular derivatives, Marxism, Maoism, Freudianism and Jungianism-whic h are all derivatives of the big religion of patriarchy. Sin against the infrastructure itself!
Tests and trials are given to all of us. These mortal challenges allow us and our Heavenly Father to see whether we will exercise our agency to follow His Son. He already knows, and we have the opportunity to learn, that no matter how difficult our circumstances, all these things shall be for our experience, and our good.
I'm drawn to the taboos that surround the human body. I find it fascinating that we are repelled by many of the acts and processes that keep us alive.
The motive power of democracy is love
Form as a goal always ends in formalism. For this striving is directed not towards an inside, but towards an outside. But only a living inside has a living outside.
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