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Values & belief

What has life taught you about being human?

15 answers answered between 1996 and 2026

Originally asked

Krista Tippett, to her guests, On Being

Krista Tippett uses this as a recurring, sometimes-closing On Being question; the wording is intentionally adapted to each guest.

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Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Science and medicine 2 Arts and letters 5 Politics and public life 5 Business and finance 2 Technology 1
Read by age Any age In their thirties 2 In their forties 1 In their fifties 2 In their sixties 4 Seventy and beyond 3
Paul Kalanithi Neurosurgeon and writer
Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed.
Recorded Stanford Medicine magazine, Spring 2015, 23 February 2015 source ↗

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