Life should be great rather than long – Ambedkar

Life should be great rather than long: I love this quote – because it talks about the purpose of life. As I write this, I want to be clear that I want to lead a long life. With that being out in the open, let’s talk about the point of this quote. Life should be great rather than long because it ties us to a purpose. This purpose serves as a motivation for us to continue at times of hardship. If we try and imagine the life led by Ambedkar, we can safely conclude that hardships were a part of his life. However, the purpose was great and his commitment to it makes him one of the heroes that we constantly remember.

Life should be great rather than long meaning

So what is the meaning of this quote? This comes down to the purpose of our life. Not only the purpose but the values that we stand for. Our lives are too small even if they are long. The only way we can think of leaving a longer impact is by thinking of what values we want to leave behind and the stories that people tell about us. Although it sounds a bit lofty, these stories are based on how we impact the lives of others around us. Funnily enough, it is never to do with how much money we have or the accomplishments of our personal life.

Life should be great rather than long

Ambedkar

The only thing that people remember us for is how we made them feel. We are social beings – the purpose of our lives gets lost when we look inward selfishly and try to accomplish things for ourselves. Although it is great to do that, the value for the external world is limited. If we want to live beyond our life and even longer in the memories of people, the best thing we can do is think about others. Find out how we can be useful for people and then we can do justice to this quote. Life can be great if we start tying our values and beliefs to the benefit of society. These beliefs will help us start understanding this quote and refining its meaning in our lives.

Ambedkar Quotes

Reading any quote for its meaning in isolation is a dangerous thing. To get a flavour of a quote, we must spend some time on the historical context, what people are known for and their contributions. The time they spend, in their environment is different from the current day world. Once we encourage this thinking, we can start refining these quotes to add value to our lives too. With that background, I’d like to talk about a few quotes from Ambedkar that inspired me to write this article.

I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved.”

Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence.”

“The duty must be performed, let the effort be success or failure.””I do not want that our loyalty as Indians should be in the slightest way affected by any competitive loyalty whether that loyalty arises out of our religion, out of our culture or out of our language.”

This is only a short collection from the wider quotes, but hope it provides a certain context for this quote about life’s length and purpose.