A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
Interpretation
The essence of life is to love those around us, irrespective of circumstances.
Kurt Vonnegut's quote suggests that the primary purpose of human existence is to express love to others, regardless of the external factors influencing our lives. It highlights the importance of connection, compassion, and making meaningful relationships with those in our vicinity, advocating for love as a fundamental human drive.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of community, I shared Vonnegut's quote to emphasize love's role in enhancing our lives.
But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.
I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.
How subservient to Jesus, or to a humane God Almighty, were the leaders of this country back in the 1840's, when Marx said such a supposedly evil thing about religion? They had made it perfectly legal to own human slaves, and weren't going to led women vote or hold public office, God forbid, for another eighty year.
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States - and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - "God damn it, you've got to be kind."
If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
Rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love.
If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.
Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.
A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.
I don't do great things. I do small things with great love.
I know of only one duty, and that is to love.
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