Skip to content
quotesby

We have found a race that builds for the sheer joy of building, that creates beauty, that writes books, that invents the lives of never-known people to delight other who know they are being lied to, a race that devises immortal gods to worship and celebrates it's own mortality with immense pomp and glory. Death is the foundation of all that is great about humanity

Orson Scott Card#751

LifeDeathHumanityBeautyCreationGreatness

About this quote

What does it mean?
Humanity's greatness comes from creating beauty and acknowledging its own end. This quote celebrates the drive to build and imagine despite mortality.
In plain terms
Creating beauty while knowing we die makes us great.
What can you take from it?
Accepting death fuels great creation.

Where it applies

  • cultural discussion
  • mortality reflection
  • philosophical debate

Putting it to work

  • celebrate human creativity
  • accept mortality

Questions to consider

  • Does death give life value?
  • What makes humans great?

Another view

It idealizes human struggle with death.

More from Orson Scott Card

  1. All that you do is mortal - it is all born. It all dies. And yet you struggle against mortality and have overcome it, building up tremendous stores of shared k…

    Permalink to quote #750
  2. They were gnawed within by the grief of knowing that this greatest gift of all gifts was forever out of their reach.

    Permalink to quote #752
  3. The combination was irresistible even if he hadn't loved her desperately. (more than she loves me, he sometimes admitted to himself.) He did love her desperate…

    Permalink to quote #749

Related quotes

  1. Estas que fueron pompa y alegria despertando al albor de la manana, a la tarde seran lastima vana durmiendo en brazos de la noche fria.

    Pedro Calderon de la BarcaPedro Calderon de la Barca quote #1
  2. Vanquished in life, his death By beauty made amends: The passing of his breath Won his defeated ends.

    Lionel JohnsonLionel Johnson quote #2
  3. Every body is a book of blood; Wherever we're opened, we're red.

    Clive BarkerClive Barker quote #2