Life & Mortality Quote by Ali ibn Abi Talib

A tightrope act disguised as a proverb, Ali ibn Abi Talib's line refuses the lazy extremes: pure worldliness on one side, pure asceticism on the other. Its brilliance is structural. By yoking two impossible time horizons - "live forever" and "die tomorrow" - it forces a double consciousness: build like a long-term steward, pray like a mortal under deadline. The intent isn't balance for balance's sake; it's discipline. One half crushes procrastination, the other crushes greed.

The subtext is a rebuke to two familiar spiritual alibis. First: the believer who hides from responsibility by calling the material world "temporary" while leaving injustice, ignorance, and poverty to fester. Second: the ambitious striver who treats faith as a retirement plan, assuming there's always time to repent later. Ali flips both. If you might die tomorrow, you do not postpone repair: apologies, charity, ethical accounting. If you might live forever, you do not gamble your community's future on short-term thrills; you invest, learn, govern, and build institutions that outlast you.

Context matters. Ali wasn't a detached moralist; he was a central figure in early Islam's political and theological storms, expected to model piety while navigating leadership, conflict, and social fracture. The saying reads like guidance for a community where faith had to be lived in markets and courts, not only in prayer. It offers a moral operating system: urgency without panic, ambition without idolatry, spirituality without escape.