Living Forever Quotes
A collection of quotes regarding longevity, life extension and living forever.
Ageing Research
"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
Artificial Intelligence
"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
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
Death
"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
"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
"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
"The idea is to die young as late as possible" - Ashley Montagu - 1956
"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)
"If all else fail, myself have power to die" - Shakespeare (Juliet, Romeo and Juliet)
Ethics
"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)
Diet
"We find ten thousand times more recycled theories than rigorous experiments." - Prof Tim Spector (The Diet Myth, 2016)
Immortality
"Don’t use the word immortality when you talk about my work. It’s taken; it’s a religious word" – Dr. 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
Life Extension
"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
"My goal is to live longer than everyone that has ever lived" - Mike Lustgarten
"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)
"This old broom has had 17 new heads, and 14 new handles." - Trigger - 1996 (Only Fools and Horses)
Medical Technology
"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
Natural Disasters
“It's always earthquake season.” - Kaniewski (FEMA) - TBC
Old Age
"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
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
"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