Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Human manners are wildly inconsistent; plenty of people have said so. But this one takes the cake: the manner in which we're allowed to steal from future generations, while commanding them not to do that to us, and rolling our eyes at anyone who is tediously PC enough to point that out. The conspicious consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spirtual error, or even bad manners.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the hypocrisy of current generations consuming resources irresponsibly while blaming future generations for potential consequences.
Barbara Kingsolver's quote critiques the inconsistency in human behavior regarding environmental consumption and responsibility. It points out the irony of older generations exploiting resources without foresight, while simultaneously admonishing younger generations to be cautious and considerate of future implications. The quote underscores the need for a collective acknowledgment of our moral obligations to both current and future inhabitants of the Earth, emphasizing that disregarding sustainable practices is not just imprudent but fundamentally unethical.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about climate change to emphasize intergenerational responsibility.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes →Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
Similar quotes
In our society it is murder, psychologically, to deprive a man of a job or an income. You are in substance saying to that man that he has no right to exist. You are in a real way depriving him of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, denying in his case the very creed of his society.
Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.
What has happened here [aftermath of 9/11] is not war in its traditional sense. This is clearly a crime against humanity. War crimes are crimes which happen in war time. There is a confusion there. This is a crime against humanity because it is deliberate and intentional killing of large numbers of civilians for political or other purposes. That is not tolerable under the international systems. And it should be prosecuted pursuant to the existing laws.
If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grace; if He has made it bitter, drink it in communion with Him.
Those individuals who give moral considerations a much greater weight than considerations of expediency represent a comparatively small minority, five percent of the people perhaps. But, In spite of their numerical inferiority, they play a major role in our society because theirs is the voice of the conscience of society.
Time has three dimensions and one positive pitch or direction. It is therefore not so much like any river or any sea as like the Sea of Galilee, which has the Jordan running through it and giving a current to the whole.