Life & Wisdom Quote by Clifford D. Simak

Simak starts by yanking "the purpose of life" out of the usual confessional frame and into something closer to cosmic natural history. The opening clause sounds like the familiar philosophical setup, then he widens the aperture so fast it becomes a rebuke: if your answer only fits humans, it probably isnt an answer to life at all, just a flattering story we tell ourselves.

The intent is quietly radical. By insisting on "all life on Earth" and life "upon other planets", Simak refuses the comforting idea that meaning is a private human possession. Purpose becomes a property of living systems, not of Homo sapiens self-mythology. That move carries subtext: anthropocentrism is not just parochial, its intellectually sloppy. He also slides past the parochial fights of his era - religion versus science, Cold War ideology, technological triumphalism - and asks a question that makes those battles look small.

Context matters. Writing in the long shadow of mid-century science fiction, Simak was part of a tradition that used outer space to interrogate Earthly arrogance. But unlike the rocket-and-ray-gun futurism, his work often treats the nonhuman - animals, machines, landscapes, outsiders - as moral equals. The line "must exist" isnt a proof claim so much as a worldview: a faith in plurality, in the universes refusal to center us.

Rhetorically, the sentence works because it expands without losing its calm. No fireworks, no sermon. Just a steady widening circle that makes the reader feel the shrinkage of their own assumptions.