QuoteProject
Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young have usually so little fear of death; they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten.
Lewis Mumford
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote emphasizes that the quality of experiences in life is more important than the quantity of time lived.

Lewis Mumford highlights the significance of rich and meaningful experiences in life over mere longevity. He suggests that younger individuals often embrace life with an intensity that can overshadow their awareness of mortality, while older individuals may have experienced life more fully and thus have a different perspective on death. This introspection invites readers to reflect on how they define a fulfilling life and the experiences that contribute to it.

Themes

ExperienceLifeMortalityIntensityYouthElderly

In practice

Example use cases

In a motivational speech about living life to the fullest.

More from Lewis Mumford

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
Lewis MumfordRead
Neither democracy nor effective representation is possible until each participant in the group...devotes a measurable part of his life to furthering its existence.
Lewis MumfordRead
Moment to moment, it turns out, is not God's conception, or nature's. It is man conversing with himself about and through a piece of machinery he created."We effectively became "time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers" with the invention of the clock."
Lewis MumfordRead
By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed.
Lewis MumfordRead
The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is actually the right to destroy the city.
Lewis MumfordRead
The very people who shudder over the cruelty of the hunter are apt to forget that slaughter, in the grimmest sense of the word, is a process they entrust daily to the butcher; and that unlike the game of the forests, even the dumbest creatures of the slaughterhouse know what is in store for them.
Lewis MumfordRead

Similar quotes

in the presence of extraordinary actuality, consciousness takes the place of imagination.
Wallace StevensRead
Paul commands: 'Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the Traditions which you have been taught, whether by word or by our letter.' From this it is clear that they did not hand down everything by letter, but there is much also that was not written. Like that which was written, the unwritten too is worthy of belief. So let us regard the Tradition of the Church also as worthy of belief. Is it a Tradition? Seek no further.
Saint John ChrysostomRead
Having never left the house you are looking for the way home
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajRead
I do not think psychoanalysis has a scientific basis. If we can't explain why a cockroach decides to turn left, how can we explain why a human being decides to do something?
Noam ChomskyRead
The whole meaning of morality is a rule that we ought to obey whether we like it or not. If so, then the idea of creating a morality we like better is incoherent. Moreover, it would seem that until we had created our new morality, we would have no standard by which to criticize God. Since we have not yet created one, the standard by which we judge Him must be the very standard that He gave us. If it is good enough to judge Him by, then why do we need a new one?
J. BudziszewskiRead
No one that encounters prosperity does not also encounter danger.
HeraclitusRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.