Time & Perspective Quote by Thornton Wilder

Security is the seduction Wilder refuses. The line is built like a tightrope: "good and excellent" on one side, "razor-edge of danger" on the other. It turns virtue into a live wire, not a keepsake. The phrasing "moment by moment" is doing the real work here, shrinking history into seconds and insisting that what we call "progress" is really maintenance under pressure. Nothing stays good by inertia; it stays good because someone keeps hands on it.

Wilder, writing in a century that made catastrophe feel bureaucratic, is pushing back against the comforting idea that decency is humanity's default setting. The "razor-edge" image is melodramatic in the best way: it makes stability sound physically precarious, like one small shift could slice it apart. That exaggeration is intentional. It's not just warning; it's recruitment.

The most revealing word is "must". Not "should", not "ought". Wilder frames the defense of "excellent" things as obligation, not personal preference. Then he lands on "fought for", a phrase that borrows the moral clarity of wartime rhetoric but applies it to everyday civic and intimate life: art, love, democratic norms, kindness, community. The subtext is bleak but bracing: the world doesn't naturally trend toward the humane; it trends toward entropy, cruelty, and convenience. If you want something better, you don't admire it. You guard it, you rebuild it, you choose it again tomorrow.