Good quotes have a way of summarizing a key concept into a few words that make the idea digestible and meaningful to any reader. That’s why the club maintains a list of interesting longevity quotes covering everything from ageing research to death, as well as medical technology, investing and ethics.

Here I’ve picked 5 of the best longevity quotes from 2024 and added in my interpretation.

Enjoy!

Adrian – Founder of the Live Forever Club

In his new book, The Singularity is Nearer, Ray Kurzweil says “Death takes from us all the things that in my view give life meaning.” I totally agree. There are people who argue that death gives live meaning – though I’ve really only come across that argument being made by ethicists. Obviously, if you think that death is the next step to an immortal afterlife then it should not be a concern (but it often is, read into that what you will) but if, like me (and other humanists/non-believers) you believe death is the final stop, then it can only obliterate any meaning in my life. Everything I’ve ever worked on, loved or longed to do – it is no more.

So why isn’t the whole world raging against there mortality? Demanding that governments increase their miniscule funding of ageing research to find out how we really tick and then try to stop it? I realise that most people are totally unaware that this is even a possibility, so we need to help them come out of their death trance and join the fight against ageing. This won’t be an easy task. As Venki Ramakrishnan explains in Why We Die, “The knowledge of death is so terrifying that we live most of our lives in denial of it.”

But one step at a time. As Harold Katcher, who has developed an elixir that extends the life of rats as suggested: “First conquer aging, then look to death.” To many, that may be the same thing, so let me quickly explain the difference. Ageing is the exponential increase in your chance of death which doubles roughly every eight years. So, if you stopped ageing, how long you lived would depend on how old your were at the time. If you’re 30, then you’ve got a 1 in 2,000 chance of dying each year – which will now stay constant, so, on average, you’ll live to around 1,400 (yes! over a thousand years), But if you’re already 70, your chance of dying in the next 12 months has increased to 1 in 50 – meaning you’d be lucky to see your 110th birthday. But as Katcher say, let’s tackle ageing first, as the same therapies that cure ageing will likely also be able to reverse it to make you a younger version of yourself, massively increasing your life expectancy.

But is that realistic? Biology is complicated, unbelievably complicated. But luckily for us it’s not getting any more complicated. Unlike our understanding of cells, ageing and potential medical interventions. Or, as Andrew Scott puts it in his book, The Longevity Imperative, “Our knowledge will increase faster than any increase in the complexity of human biology.” This one has really hit home with me and lights up the eyes of many people I pass it on to. Our knowledge really is increasing exponentially, studying thousands of proteins at a time and automated laboratories to speed up the raw data creation needed to feed the AI models.

So, eventually, it seems it is inevitable that scientists will fundamentally understand the intricacies of the human body and ageing, and that biotechnologists will figure out a way to slow, stop and reverse ageing. Will it happen in your lifetime? Well, going back Ray Kurzweil who updated his prediction this year… “By around 2030, the most diligent and informed people will reach ‘longevity escape velocity’ - a tipping point at which we can add more than a year to our remaining life expectancy for each calendar year that passes.”

Let’s not just hope that Kurzweil is correct with his forecast, let’s demand the changes needed to make it happen.