Living Forever Quotes
A collection of quotes regarding longevity, life extension and living forever.
Want to know our favourites? See Best Longevity Quotes of 2024.
Ageing
"Shouldn’t all forms of aging be considered successful given the alternative is dying?" - Andrew Scott - 2024
"Healthy aging is an oxymoron. No aging-related change is an improvement in health." - Ingemar Patrick Linden - 2023
"Aging, as I like to think of it, is a drawn out dying." - Ingemar Patrick Linden - 2022
"To say that we shouldn't cure ageing is ageism, saying that old people are unworthy of medical care." - Aubrey de Grey - 2004
"The aim should be to compress age-related inconveniences near the end of life." - Cornelis F. Calkhoven - ERIBA (comment on "Why do we age" course)
"Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed." - Charles M. Schulz - 1980
Ageing Research
"Our knowledge will increase faster than any increase in the complexity of human biology." - Andrew Scott - 2024
"Today we know that curing aging is possible; we also know that it will not be easy." - José Cordeiro - 2023
"If everyone in the world were seven years younger biologically than chronologically, we would cut disease in half overnight." - Ryan Smith, TruDiagnostic - 2022
"What we need is an antibiotic for aging" - Irina Conboy - 2022
"I believe that aging is a disease. I believe it is treatable. I believe we can treat it within our lifetimes." - David A. Sinclair (from Lifespan, published 2019)
"If you’re not reducing mortality, then you’re not reversing ageing" - João Pedro de Magalhães at Ending Age-Related Diseases - 2019
"Death from aging-associated disease will seem as unusual as death due to infection is in affluent industrialized countries." - Michael Rose - 2011
"In principle, if you understood the mechanisms of keeping things repaired, you could keep things going indefinitely." - Cynthia Kenyon - 2005
"But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death." - Richard Feynman - 1964
Artificial Intelligence
"The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made of atoms which it can use for something else." - Eliezer Yudkowsky - 2008
"The minimum IQ required to destroy the world drops by one point every 18 months." - Eliezer Yudkowsky - 2007
"Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child’s? If this were then subjected to an appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain." – Alan Turing 1950
Augmentation
"When you talk to a human in 2035, you’ll be talking to someone that’s a combination of biological and non-biological intelligence." - Ray Kurzweil - 2010
Biohacking
“Technologies like genetic engineering, stem cells, cybernetics, and nanotechnology will allow us to 'hack' biology and evolve beyond our current human limits.” - João Pedro de Magalhães, Professor (Musculoskeletal & Ageing Science), University of Liverpool
Cancer
"We can finally see a path to a world where a cancer diagnosis typically means an early detection of a treatable problem rather than a late discovery of a grim one." - Peter Attia - 2023
Death
"Death takes from us all the things that in my view give life meaning." - Ray Kurzweil - 2024
"The knowledge of death is so terrifying that we live most of our lives in denial of it." - Venki Ramakrishnan - 2024
"We protect ourselves from the awfulness of death by telling a story that makes sense of it as a beautiful and fitting end to a full life." - Ingemar Patrick Linden - 2022
"There must, I think, be something wrong with someone who cannot imagine anything they would rather do after 90 or 100 or 110, if in decent health, than be dead." - Ingemar Patrick Linden - 2022
"Apologists for death recognize that we have a natural instinct to live." - Ingemar Patrick Linden - 2022
"The problem is aging. The problem is death. That is the real issue. We are all aging. We are all dying. This is the major common enemy of humanity." - José Cordeiro - 2020
"I'm not afraid of death, just pissed off about it!" - Arnold Schwarzenegger - 2019
"I majored in neuroscience, I’ve worked in hospitals, but until my father died I did not understand the finality of 'Gone, never to be seen again.'" - Bill Maris - 2017
"Nature deemed that to be born was an automatic sentence to death." - Gleaning journal of H.S. Goddard (Scythe, book by Neal Shusterman) - 2016
"You're going to be that dead, that kind of dead, that terrible kick-in-the-stomach, knock-down-drag-out, game over dead." - Movement for Indefinite Life Extension - 7-May-2015
"I’ve always had this really strong sense that death was a terrible, terrible thing." - Peter Thiel - 2015
"Death is the number one killer in the world." - Unknown - 2015
"[regarding death] Basically, I’m against it." - Peter Thiel - 2014
"My dad died, and my grandfather died, and my great-grandfather died, and the guy before him, I don't know, I think he probably died... I come from a long line of death." - Norm Macdonald - 2013
"Death, in short, must now be redefined as simply the point at which current medical technologies are obliged to confess impotence." - Bryan Appleyard (How to Live Forever or Die Trying - 2008
"Americans have a funny approach to this - we think death is optional" - David Brennan (AstraZeneca CEO) - 2006
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time." - Tyler Durden (Fight Club, film) - 1999
"We know that we will die but every morning but we act as if that is not true." - Walter van den Broeck - 1990
"Any reason for living is an excellent reason for not dying" - Steven Luper - 1985
"I'm so bored with it all." - Winston Churchill - 1965
"The idea is to die young as late as possible" - Ashley Montagu - 1956
"The knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor." - Aldous Huxley - 1950
"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark." - Stephen Hawking
"I wanna live. I don’t wanna die. That’s the whole meaning of life: Not dying! I figured that shit out by myself in the third grade." - George Carlin
"It is my death, and my death only, which is not an event of that 'knowable' world of objects" - Zygmunt Bauman
"Man has created death" - William Butler Yeat
"If there were no regeneration, there could be no life. If everything regenerated, then there could be no death." - Richard J. Goss (1969)
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." - Dylan Thomas - 1947
"Death takes place because a worn-out tissue cannot forever renew itself" - August Weismann (1881)
"It is quite impossible for a thinking being to imagine nonbeing, a cessation of thought and life." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 1800
"If all else fail, myself have power to die" - Shakespeare (Juliet, Romeo and Juliet)
Diet
"Eating greens at least nearly every day may be one of the most powerful steps we can take to extend our lifespan." - Michael Greger - 2023
"For the first time in history, more people die today of eating too much than from eating too little." - Yuval Noah Harari - 2016
"We find ten thousand times more recycled theories than rigorous experiments." - Prof Tim Spector (The Diet Myth, 2016)
"The active ingredient in broccoli is broccoli." - David Katz - 2012
Ethics
"Even if we lived hundreds of years, we would not exhaust all the knowledge there is to gain, and all the culture there is to consume." - Ray Kurzweil - 2024
"Technologies start out being expensive with limited function. By the time they are perfected, they are affordable to almost everyone." - Ray Kurzweil - 2024
"We cannot look to geroscience and technology to ensure a long life becomes a good life." - Andrew Scott - 2024
"Aging-related diseases cause the greatest suffering to the greatest number of people." - José Cordeiro - 2023
"Slowing or stopping aging would be the best thing we can do for the relief of human suffering." - Ingemar Patrick Linden - 2022
"If we agree that an individual’s life has inherent value, whether they are young or old, then it makes sense to want to preserve that life." - Jean Hébert (Replacing Aging, 2020)
"I don’t mind dying. I’ve seen everything there is to see." - Winston Churchill - 1964
Equality in Longevity
"Would it not be the ultimate injustice if only some people could afford a deathless existence, if the world were divided not only into rich and poor but into mortal and immortal." - Leon Kass - 2001
How To Live Forever
"Nearly eighteen years of lifespan are up for grabs based on simple, commonsense health behaviors." - Michael Greger - 2023
"In today’s unhealthy society, “normal” or “average” is not the same as “optimal.”" - Peter Attia - 2023
"While the benefits of wise decisions grow, the costs of unwise decisions also grow." - Michael Roizen - 2022
"Your longevity depends more on the aggregate of what you do most of the time, not being perfect all the time." - Michael Roizen - 2022
Healthcare
"We must rethink the entire health system and invest at the beginning, rather than spend at the end." - José Cordeiro - 2023
"Having a normal cholesterol level in a society where it’s normal to drop dead of a heart attack isn’t necessarily something to celebrate." - Michael Greger - 2023
Healthspan
"If someone were to offer a pill that would add ten years of healthy life, hardly anyone would decline it." - Venki Ramakrishnan - 2024
Immortality
"Don’t use the word immortality when you talk about my work. It’s taken; it’s a religious word" – Aubrey de Grey
"To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal." - Jorge Luis Borges
"I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment." - Woody Allen
Investment
"If we are going to live to 110-120 the best thing is to invest in the thing that’ll help you get there." - Jim Mellon - 2019
Life Expectancy
"The fact that nature gave us a particular life span is not a reason to avoid seeking to extend it." - John K. Davis - 2018
"It is not enough for a great nation merely to have added new years to life - our objective must also be to add new life to those years." - John F. Kennedy - 1963
Life Extension
"First conquer aging, then look to death." - Harold Katcher - 2024
"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." - Ray Kurzweil - 2024
"We are between the last mortal human generation and the first immortal human generation." - José Cordeiro - 2023
"The question today is not whether it [human rejuvenation] will be possible, but rather when it will be possible." - José Cordeiro - 2023
"It is time to begin a fantastic journey into indefinite youth." - José Cordeiro - 2023
"It’s likely that we’re just another 6 years away from the point that the general public will hit longevity escape velocity." - Peter H. Diamandis - 2023
"Longevity is not the problem: It is the cure." - Michael Roizen - 2022
"Significantly extending human lifespan has changed from a question of if to a matter of when." - Peter H. Diamandis - 2020
"I would rather fade away by slowly evolving into someone else in a body that lives than fade away into senility in a body that dies." - John K. Davis - 2018
"Aging is a disease, and life extension is a kind of medicine." - John K. Davis - 2018
"If your life is good, it’s good to have more of it." - John K. Davis - 2018
"The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea." - Peter H. Diamandis - 2017
"In truth, so far modern medicine hasn't extended our natural lifespan by a single year. Its great achievement has been to save us from premature death." - Yuval Noah Harari - 2016
"I just hope to live long enough not to die." - Bill Maris - 2015
"Someone younger at heart should replace you, and that should be you." - George Church - 2015
"Life expectancy is a statistical phenomenon. You could still be hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow." - Ray Kurzweil - 2014
"There is no difference between saving lives and extending lives, because in both cases we are giving people the chance of more life. " - Aubrey de Grey - 2004
"My goal is to live longer than everyone that has ever lived" - Mike Lustgarten
"This old broom has had 17 new heads, and 14 new handles." - Trigger - 1996 (Only Fools and Horses)
"Man will never be contented until he conquers death." - Bernard Strehler - 1977
Longevity Genes
"Genes load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger." - George A. Bray - 1998
Medical Technology
"AI can learn from more data than a human doctor ever could." - Ray Kurzweil - 2024
"Whereas [doctors] vary in skill, even day to day, AI will only improve over time." - Sergey Young - 2021 (The Science and Technology of Growing Young)
"Electronic health information is like nuclear energy. If it’s harnessed and kept under tight control, it has potential for good. But if it gets out of control, the damage is incalculable." - Jim Pyles - 2013
"In the 19th century we treated symptoms; in the 20th century we treated diseases; In the 21st century technology we will predict and prevent disease." - Bryan Vartabedian - 2012
Mental Wellbeing
"People often ask me [if modern life is becoming too stressful] sometimes comparing our lives with that of the caveman, who didn't have to worry about the stock market or the atomic bomb. They forget that the caveman worried about being eaten by a bear while he was asleep, or about dying of hunger, things that few people worry about much today.
In the end I doubt whether modern man experiences more distress than his ancestors. It's not that people suffer more stress today. It's just that they think they do." - Hans Selye (pioneering endocrinologist- basically discovered stress) - 1977
Mind Upload
"Copying our mind files to a remote backup storage system will be a powerful protection against any accident or disease that might damage our brain." - Ray Kurzweil - 2024
Nanotechnology
"Eventually, using nanobots for body maintenance and optimization should prevent major diseases from even arising." - Ray Kurzweil - 2024
"Impressive advances in nanotechnology will enable us to compose, decompose, and recompose matter at a very low cost." - José Cordeiro - 2023
Natural Disasters
“It's always earthquake season.” - Kaniewski (FEMA) - TBC
Old Age
"If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself." - Dick Van Dyke - 2023
"Being the oldest living person is the most dangerous job in the world - usually being killed on the job within a few months" - Steven Austad (Methuselah’s Zoo, 2022)
"Old age isn't a battle: old age is a massacre." - Philip Roth (Everyman) - 2006
"Welcome to your 40s. If you do not already have a mysterious ailment, one will be assigned to you shortly ." - unknown (meme ~2019)
"Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old." - Jonathan Swift - 1667-1745
"Do not resent growing old, many are denied the privilege." - Irish Proverb
Religion
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there." - Steve Jobs - 2011
"The only ‘afterlife’ is what other people remember of you." - Craig Venter - 2009
Society
"I don't think we should try to have people live for a really long time... if they don't die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn't advance." - Elon Musk - 2022
Space Colonization
"I'd like to die on Mars, just not on impact" - Elon Musk - 2013
Survival
"Whole nation depends on technology. Stop the wheels for two days and you'd have riots. No place is more than two meals from a revolution. Think of Los Angeles or New York with no electricity." - Dr Charles Sharps ("Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) - 1977; this also possibly what Gaiman was referring to in Good Omens with "It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.")
Transhumanism
"Minds based only on the organic substrates of biological brains can’t hope to keep up with minds augmented by nonbiological precision nanoengineering." - Ray Kurzweil - 2024
"We didn't evolve through billions of years to remain animals." - Zoltan Istvan
"As humanism freed us from the chains of superstition, let transhumanism free us from our biological chains. - Simon Young, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto
