Life & Wisdom Quote by Olin Miller

That line lands like a handshake that turns into a slap: pragmatic, a little cruel, and intentionally unfashionable. Olin Miller frames restraint as generosity, flipping the sentimental script that treats having more children as an unqualified good. The sting is in the word "best" - a moral claim, not a lifestyle tip. He isn’t asking readers to pity the overcrowded world; he’s asking them to admit complicity in it.

The subtext is a mid-century American collision between abundance and anxiety. Miller lived through boom-and-bust economics, two world wars, the Great Depression, and the early Cold War, then watched the postwar baby boom swell. Against that backdrop, "descendents" becomes a cold, ledger-like term: people as inherited obligations, not just beloved faces. He’s also poking at a cultural reflex - the notion that legacy is measured in quantity, that family size is proof of vitality, faith, or success. By treating fewer births as a gift to the unborn, he redirects the idea of inheritance away from bloodline pride and toward material conditions: resources, stability, attention, opportunity.

The intent is not romantic anti-natalism; it’s social arithmetic delivered with a writer’s scalpel. "Sharply limit" signals urgency and discipline, implying that gentle moderation won’t do. The line works because it weaponizes common moral language ("best thing") to smuggle in a taboo premise: responsible love sometimes means saying no, even to ourselves, even to tradition.