Interview with Gore Vidal

Q:  "Why do you think people so desperately want there to be a purpose for humankind?"

Answer by Gore Vidal:  "They don't want to be extinct.  They think if there's a purpose, somebody as wonderful as they is going to be preserved.  I haven't met many people worth preservation, you know, much less their hopes and fears.  They have my sympathy but no more.  I've been close to death a few times.  You do start to think about being snuffed out like a candle but if you're in pain or a more deadly subject, boredom, you can accept it pretty easily."

From an interview with Gore Vidal in this month's "The Humanist" magazine.

Written in the 19th century and oh so apropos today . . .

It is odd to watch with what feverish ardor Americans pursue prosperity.  Ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they may not have chosen the shortest route to get it.  They cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die, and yet rush to snatch any that comes within their reach as if they expected to stop living before they had relished them.  Death steps in, in the end, and stops them before they have grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes them.

- Alexis De Tocqueville "Democracy in America"