After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Life under oppressive systems can be so draining that death seems more valuable.
- In plain terms
- After years of hard work and travel, you might realize life is worth less than death.
- What can you take from it?
- Systems that exploit people reduce their value to the world.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- When does survival become not worth the effort?
- How do systems devalue individuals?
Another view
It is a very extreme view that undervalues the possibility of finding meaning in life.
More from Arthur Miller
You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.
Permalink to quote #54 Work a lifetime to pay off a house - You finally own it and there's nobody to live in it.
Permalink to quote #56 The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is that you're a salesman, and you don't know that.
Permalink to quote #53
Related quotes
He is dead already who doth not feel Life is worth living still.
Alfred AustinAlfred Austin quote #4 Is there life before death? That's chalked up In Ballymurphy. Competence with pain, Coherent miseries, a bite and a sup, We hug our little destiny again.
Seamus HeaneySeamus Heaney quote #4 We hanker to go on, even in the face of plain evidence that long, long lives are not necessarily pleasurable in the kind of society we have arranged thus far. …
Lewis ThomasLewis Thomas quote #4