Daily Inspiration Quote by Arthur Miller

The line cautions against a cultural hypnosis: the idea that money is the sole measure of worth. Arthur Miller spent his career dramatizing the fracture that occurs when profit eclipses human value. In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman confuses being well liked and making sales with dignity, love, and self-respect; his tragedy unfolds from the belief that a life unprofitable is a life unworthy. Biff, rejecting that calculus, gropes toward a different scale of value rooted in honest labor and personal truth. Miller keeps returning to this tension between price and worth, asking what becomes of people and communities when the market becomes the only judge.

All My Sons exposes a more brutal arithmetic. Joe Keller ships defective airplane parts to keep his business alive, and innocent soldiers die. Profit here is not only insufficient as a measure of value; it becomes an active destroyer of value, annihilating trust, responsibility, and life itself. The Price crystallizes the theme in its title: a room full of furniture carries histories and relationships that no appraiser can tabulate. Monetary price is one story; lived experience is another.

The word seduced matters. It implies flattery, ease, and a surface glamour that conceals a deeper loss. A society that equates value with profit is tempted to dismiss art that does not sell, teaching that does not yield a marketable credential, caregiving that is unpaid, and truth-telling that may cost reputation and security. During the Red Scare that inspired The Crucible, the value of conscience could not be made legible in economic terms, yet it was precisely what held the line against hysteria.

Miller argues for an ethical imagination large enough to see value where balance sheets cannot: in justice, fidelity, beauty, curiosity, and community. Profit can be a tool, even a good, but it is a poor god. When it becomes a god, people become its sacrifices.