Although human life is priceless, we always act as if something had an even greater price than life…. But what is that something?

Saint-Exupéry’s line stages a moral paradox: we profess that human life has infinite value, yet our daily choices—war, exploitation, ambition, ideology, even convenience—often treat other aims as if they outweighed life itself. The trailing question (“But what is that something?”) is less a request for a single answer than an indictment of unexamined priorities. It pushes the reader to name the hidden “higher price” that governs behavior—honor, profit, national glory, abstract principles, fear—and to test whether those substitutes deserve the sacrifices made in their name. The quote thus functions as an ethical prompt: to align declared values with lived decisions.