Quotes - Partei für Verjüngungsforschung

On this page we have compiled quotes for you on the topics of death, dying, health, aging, rejuvenation (research), future technologies and progress. The quotes are sorted by person. With this collection of quotes we are not saying that we share every opinion expressed in the respective quote, or that the people quoted support our party in any way. The collection is merely intended to inspire and to show how people from a wide range of backgrounds talk about our topic.

Collage of portraits of the people quoted

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
American film director, actor and writer

I'm not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.
Woody Allen
American film director, actor and writer

Involuntary death is one of the load-bearing pillars of evolution - but that does not mean it is a good thing.
Michael Anissimov
Futurist
"Menschheit 2.0", p. 326

If new longevity technologies can be developed faster, many lives can be saved. It is an important and humanitarian message that everyone should hear.
Sonia Arrison
Co-founder of Singularity University and author of 100 Plus
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 10

Many say they are "fine with death". But then "inexplicably" offer their kingdom for an extra year when death from aging comes knocking. Pretending everything is fine doesn't solve problems. But science does.
Adam Gries
CEO of Vitalism

We should fight to stay alive, regardless of what society says is "possible". And to stay alive we must first defeat aging, since it kills the most people & nobody has yet survived it. There is no physical law that prevents us from ending aging.
Adam Gries
CEO of Vitalism

Due to social norms many scientists won't even say death is a problem, producing astonishing contortions like calling extended lifespans a "coincidence". Sorry, my loved ones staying alive isn't a coincidence - it's the whole point!
Adam Gries
CEO of Vitalism

Some say the goal is to be perfectly healthy & plop dead at 100. Begging the question - why would we die if we're so healthy?
Adam Gries
CEO of Vitalism

It's the "wise view" to see aging & death as inevitable & lock them in a box we never think about. Or confabulate why they're actually good. I get it. I dislike thinking about it too.
Adam Gries
CEO of Vitalism

Many publicly say aging and death are "fine", but privately go to world war with botox & ultra-expensive longevity clinics to avoid them, not to speak of everyday actions like seat belts.
Adam Gries
CEO of Vitalism

I think that aging can be cured a lot faster than most people are projecting.
Bill Andrews
Molecular biologist, CEO of Sierra Sciences

Hundreds of years from now, we're going to look back and be shocked about this horrible world that we all used to live in - where people used to get old and die.
Bill Andrews
Molecular biologist, CEO of Sierra Sciences

Soon the science will not only be able to slow down the aging of the cells. Soon the science will fix the cells to the state and so we become eternal. Only accidents, crimes, wars will still kill us.
Eric Cantona
Soccer player

Aging is something plastic that we can manipulate.
Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte
Developmental biologist, professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 64

I sometimes hear people say, "Wouldn't it be boring to live forever?" But would it be more exciting to be dead? Indefinite life spans - just like the lives we have now - will be as boring or as exciting as we make them.
Nick Bostrom
Swedish philosopher, University of Oxford

We do not have to accept our current biological limitation. After all, we are a species of problem solvers. When it rains, we don't just sit around and get wet. We build houses. We should not regard our biology as law and should instead boldly develop new concepts.
Gregory Fahy
Cryobiologist and biogerontologist, CSO of 21st Century Medicine and Intervene Immune
"Kurz vor ewig - Wie wir den Code des Alterns knacken", DW documentary

When we humans lived only short lives, life did not have such a high value, and we did not care that much about nature either. So maybe it is not a bad thing if we live longer. Then we would take more care of our planet, our environment and the living beings on this planet.
Maria Blasco
Molecular biologist, deputy director of the National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid
"Kurz vor ewig - Wie wir den Code des Alterns knacken", DW documentary

A person should really be free to live as long as they want. In that sense, I interpret death as a bad thing. Death is my enemy.
Steve Horvath
Professor of human genetics and biostatistics at the University of California, Los Angeles
"Für immer jung: Machen Forscher einen Menschheitstraum wahr?", die story (documentary)

Yes, I was selected for death; no, I don't really plan to die.
Sergey Brin
Computer scientist, developer of the Google search engine
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 273

Man fears death because he loves life.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Russian writer, 1880
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 205

It is likely that the following generations will, on average, live much longer than they expect. Technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, and that is why it is important to discuss what to do with the much longer life.
Juan Enriquez
Author of As The Future Catches You and Evolving Ourselves
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 7

It is one of the most remarkable things that in all of the biological sciences there is no clue as to the necessity of death. If you say we want to make perpetual motion, we have discovered enough laws as we studied physics to see that it is either absolutely impossible or else the laws are wrong. But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death. This suggests to me that it is not at all inevitable, and that it is only a matter of time before the biologists discover what it is that is causing us the trouble and that that terrible universal disease or temporariness of the human's body will be cured.
Richard Feynman
American physicist and Nobel laureate

The rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter. All diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of old age, and our lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian standard.
Benjamin Franklin
American writer, scientist, inventor and statesman, 1780
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 273

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they argue with you, and then they say they were on your side all along.
Mahatma Gandhi
Indian lawyer and pacifist

To adopt a perspective of temporal limitation is to make clear to yourself that the vibrant activity animating your own mind will one day come to an end.
Brian Greene
Theoretical physicist
"Bis zum Ende der Zeit", p. 347

Despite (…) concerns, however, I suspect that we have sufficient means - all the more so if we were given an infinite amount of time - to become well-adapted immortals. Our needs and abilities would probably change beyond recognition, and with that, insights into what motivates us and keeps us going here and now would have little or no relevance anymore. Should eternal joy in life require a different kind of joy, we would find it, invent it or develop it. All of this is only conjecture, of course, but the conclusion that we would inevitably become bored suggests an extremely limited conception of the immortal mind.
Brian Greene
Theoretical physicist
"Bis zum Ende der Zeit", p. 348

It's not a question of living to 1,000 or living to 200 even. I mean, I don't even know whether I want to live to 100. But I do know that I'd like to make that choice when I'm 99, rather than having those choices gradually taken away from me by my declining health.
Aubrey de Grey
Bioinformatician and aging researcher, CSO and president of the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation

The right to choose to live or to die is the most fundamental right there is; conversely, the duty to give others that opportunity to the best of our ability is the most fundamental duty there is.
Aubrey de Grey
Bioinformatician and aging researcher, CSO and president of the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation

There's no such thing as aging gracefully. I don't meet people who want to get Alzheimer's disease, or who want to get cancer or arthritis or any of the other things that afflict the elderly. Aging is bad for you, and we better just actually accept that.
Aubrey de Grey
Bioinformatician and aging researcher, CSO and president of the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation

I find that it's a strange question when people say, "What's so bad about death?" I mean, hello, people tend to spend their entire lives avoiding death, crossing the road carefully and stuff like that. Why do people ask this question when it comes to aging? It seems completely anomalous to me that people should regard aging as some sort of exception to the general rule that death is actually not something to be desired.
Aubrey de Grey
Bioinformatician and aging researcher, CSO and president of the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation

There is no ticking time bomb - only the accumulation of damage. The aging of the body is merely a matter of maintenance, like the aging of a car or a house.
Aubrey de Grey
Bioinformatician and aging researcher, CSO and president of the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation
"Niemals alt!", p. 29

Imagine you were a researcher 200 years ago, and you had found out that better hygiene can drastically reduce child mortality. You announce this in a lecture, and someone in the back rows stands up and says: "With all due respect, if we do that, there will be a population explosion!" If you were to answer, "No, everything will be fine, because we will all use these absurd rubber things when we have sex," nobody would take you seriously. And yet that is exactly what happened - contraception became widespread at about the same time as child mortality declined.
Aubrey de Grey
Bioinformatician and aging researcher, CSO and president of the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation
"Menschheit 2.0", p. 326

You don't live in the future. You always live in the Now. And thus, you always die now.
CGP Grey
YouTuber and podcaster

I've read enough of history to know the responses I get are algorithmic. There's no surprise. I challenge a norm, I do something unusual, I'm outside the standard deviation from the norm. Given the circumstances of what my behaviour profile is like, you get a predictable human response. You get predictable responses from people in the field, from people outside the field, from media. There's no reason to be aroused by it because it's been going on for hundreds, even thousands of years.
Bryan Johnson
Founder and CEO of Blueprint

We all play don't die every day. Now let's get really good at it!
Bryan Johnson
Founder and CEO of Blueprint

We treat planet Earth the same way we treat our bodies. It's not because we hate the planet. It's not because we want to pollute the planet. We just do whatever we want whenever we want. (…) How funny is it, how ironic is it, that we literally treat the planet like we do our bodies. It's the same problem.
Bryan Johnson
Founder and CEO of Blueprint

Why was I born if it wasn't forever?
Eugène Ionesco
French-Romanian playwright
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 227

Yes, aging is a disease. And we will cure it.
Sven Gabor Janszky
Chairman, 2b AHEAD ThinkTank, and author of 2030 - Wie viel Menschheit verträgt die Zukunft?
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 11

Some tortoises live longer than people. Why should we be satisfied with what we've got?
Marvin Minsky
American researcher and pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence

We typically wait until people are sick before trying to cure their disease or alleviate their symptoms, rather than actively supporting health and wellbeing in the absence of disease.
Matt Kaeberlein
Professor of pathology at the University of Washington in Seattle

There is nothing good about disease and death as much as we try to ennoble it.
Ray Kurzweil
American author, inventor, futurist and director of engineering at Google LLC

The tragedy of illness and death has to be experienced personally to really appreciate its significance. Losing someone you love is an unbearable happenstance.
Ray Kurzweil
American author, inventor, futurist and director of engineering at Google LLC

I do have fantasies sometimes about dying - about what people must feel like when they're dying or what I would feel like if I were dying. And it's such a profoundly sad, lonely feeling that I really can't bear it. So I go back to thinking about how I'm not going to die.
Ray Kurzweil
American author, inventor, futurist and director of engineering at Google LLC

Death is an evil. So the gods have judged; for otherwise they too would die.
Sappho of Lesbos
Ancient Greek poet, c. 600 BC
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 20

I intend to live forever, or die trying.
Groucho Marx
American actor and entertainer, 1960
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 227

Life is a dynamic, pulsating reality; death is its full stop. It's the end of the party, lights out, everyone go home. Life is the music, the dance, the laughter, and the tears; death is the eerie silence after the show.
Danila Immortalist
Longevity activist ("Say Forever!")

It's obvious that death is bad, even animals understand this. We're sad when a loved one dies, we're sad when an animal dies, we're sad that others are sad, […] but why aren't people sad that 120,000 people die every day from aging? Why aren't people terrified that they will die from aging? I'm glad I lived to see this day. It's good that I didn't die yesterday, a month ago or a couple of years ago. If I don't die of old age in 50 years, I'm unlikely to regret it.
Yan Granat
Longevity activist ("Say Forever!")

As long as I am breathing, I will be building a future where none of us are drifting towards an inevitable end. We must create a world where watching those we love fade from existence is a burden only of the past. We must reduce death to a myth - a story that is told centuries from now of a monster that was slain. We must normalize unending life so greatly that death becomes a foreign concept to our children's children, a mere relic of a darker time.
Kai Micah Mills
Founder and CEO of Cryopets

We are moving toward a future in which death will no longer have dominion.
Raymond McCauley
Scientist, entrepreneur and founding faculty member of Singularity University
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 9

Aging is a disease that should be treated like any other.
Elie Metchnikoff
Russian zoologist and immunologist, 1903
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 64

There is no possible time in your life at which you want to be unwell.
Martin O'Dea
CEO of Longevity Events Limited, vice chair of the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation

Spend your time creating more time!
Martin O'Dea
CEO of Longevity Events Limited, vice chair of the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation

As medicine becomes an information technology, genetic and cellular therapies enable us to manipulate cells with greater precision. Thanks to the exponential acceleration of these capabilities, aging, and with it death, will be eliminated.
Elizabeth Parrish
Founder and CEO of BioViva and "patient zero" for telomerase gene therapy
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 9

Alongside Francis Bacon and Gottfried Leibniz, Benjamin Franklin was one of the few people in the pre-modern era to seriously consider extending lifespans. It is likely no coincidence that these three are among the most brilliant and versatile minds in history.
Elizabeth Parrish
Founder and CEO of BioViva and "patient zero" for telomerase gene therapy

1) "Death gives life meaning" 2) "Divorce gives marriage meaning" 3) "Bankruptcy gives business meaning" 4) "Collapse gives civilizations meaning" Please explain to me why (1) is treated as some kind of profound wisdom, whereas (2) - (4) are obviously delusional copes.
Geoffrey Miller
Psychologist and evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico

Immortality first! Everything else can wait.
Corwyn Prater
"Menschheit 2.0", p. 326

The relationship between humanity and aging should better fit a war story, not a tale of slavery and acceptance.
Reason
CEO of Repair Biotechnologies and well-known longevity activist

Life extension is more than an economic necessity or a humanitarian endeavor, it will be the cornerstone of civilizational maturity.
Adam Alonzi
Biotechnologist, documentary filmmaker and inventor, writer at "BioViva Sciences"

Don't Lie Down You say you're glad one day you'll die though not tomorrow or today. I say that's just a clever lie you tell yourself so you can play. For should you ever come to know that soon might be your time to go. You will work hard for a new lease not just lay down to rest in peace. And though you think it only fair you leave your place to someone new how would you feel to learn they knew a way to stay, but would not share?
Sean Hastings
Cypherpunk author and security expert, 2002

I want to live fast, die never!
Steve Aoki
DJ and musician
"Longevity Hackers", 2022 (documentary)

Who wants to live forever? I do, if that includes always being healthy and fit.
Frederik Cyrus Roeder
Managing director, Consumer Choice Center
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 7

Some of us think this is rather a pity.
Bertrand Russell
British philosopher, mathematician, critic of religion and logician, 1955
Context: regarding the fact that, statistically, about 100,000 people die of age-related causes every day; "Menschheit 2.0", p. 326

We can change our lives for the better, and always have. We used to think pain during surgery and dying during childbirth were inevitable. We no longer accept that, and we shouldn't just accept aging.
David Sinclair
Professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and of pharmacology at the University of New South Wales

After we take our last breath, our cells will scream for oxygen, toxins will build up, chemical energy will be depleted, and cell structures will fall apart. A few minutes later, all our education, all our wisdom and all the memories we have cherished, and our entire future potential, are irretrievably wiped out.
David Sinclair
Professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and of pharmacology at the University of New South Wales
"Das Ende des Alterns", p. 14 (heading: "Die Realität des Todes")

I consider aging a disease. I believe that it can be treated. I believe that we can treat it within our lifetimes. And in doing so, I believe, our entire knowledge of human health will fundamentally change.
David Sinclair
Professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and of pharmacology at the University of New South Wales
"Das Ende des Alterns", p. 127 (heading: "Altern als Krankheit")

How long will it take until we can reset our epigenome with ingested drugs or by genetically modifying our bodies, as my students have succeeded in doing in mice? When will we be able to destroy aged cells with drugs or even with a vaccination? When will we be able to replace parts of organs, create entire organs […] with a 3D printer? That may take a few more decades. Maybe three. At least one of these innovations, but perhaps all of them, will become available within the ever-increasing lifespan of most people. How many years will we gain when that time comes? The potential could be centuries.
David Sinclair
Professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and of pharmacology at the University of New South Wales
"Das Ende des Alterns", p. 290 f. (heading: "(Wie viel) mehr gesunde Jahre durch (mehr) Forschung?")

The idea that humans must live within the natural limits set by the environment of our planet denies the reality of our entire past and probably of the future as well. The carrying capacity of our planet arises far more from the capabilities of our social systems and our technology than from any ecological constraints. If there is such a thing as a "natural upper limit" […], the world's population probably exceeded it tens of thousands of years ago, when our hunter-gatherer ancestors turned to increasingly sophisticated irrigation systems and agricultural techniques to sustain and increase their numbers. From then on, our species grew only through the interplay of nature and our ability to adapt to it technologically. Humans are niche builders. […] We change ecosystems to sustain ourselves. That is what we do, and that is what we have always done. Following this line of argument, few of the adaptations that form the basis of our lives are "natural". Drinking water systems are not natural. Agriculture is not natural. Electricity is not natural. Schools, hospitals, roads and clothing are not natural. We crossed all of these bridges long ago, literally as well as figuratively.
David Sinclair
Professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and of pharmacology at the University of New South Wales
"Das Ende des Alterns", p. 324 (heading: "Gibt es eine 'natürliche' Kapazitätsgrenze der Erde?")

Yes, it is true: if people decide to work for eighty, ninety or a hundred years, it will fundamentally change the way our economy works. Trillions of dollars have been hidden in virtual and also in quite a number of real mattresses by people who were afraid of the prospect of running out of money at a stage of life in which they are too frail to work anymore. The possibility of working at any age, when the work is wanted and needed, will give them a kind of freedom that was unimaginable only a few years ago. The risk of using one's own savings to realize a dream, for innovation, to start a business or to take a new educational path will no longer be a big risk, but simply an investment in a long, happy future. And it is an investment that will pay off enormously.
David Sinclair
Professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and of pharmacology at the University of New South Wales
"Das Ende des Alterns", p. 341 (heading: "Länger gesund leben und arbeiten - eine Investition, die sich auszahlen wird?")

Every death is violent. There is no such thing as a natural death, quite unlike the picture we like to paint - the father who dies quietly in his sleep, surrounded by his family. I don't believe in that.
Claude Lanzmann
Holocaust documentary filmmaker

I think about death all the time, and I don't like it. I have no desire whatsoever to die. Death is scandalous; it is the scandal of human existence itself. And completely incomprehensible.
Claude Lanzmann
Holocaust documentary filmmaker

Even a hundred lives would not be enough to satisfy my curiosity about life.
Claude Lanzmann
Holocaust documentary filmmaker

Every time I see people joyfully announcing the birth of their child, I think: "The poor child. It is condemned to death."
Claude Lanzmann
Holocaust documentary filmmaker

Getting older is a struggle. I always feel that just under the surface of acceptance and enjoyment of the aging process is a terrible hysteria just waiting to burst out.
Michael Sheen
Stage and film actor

When someone dies, their personality, relationships, knowledge and wisdom all die with them. It is a tragic loss for the family, friends and community they leave behind. We do need to acknowledge and accept the phenomenon of death, but it's not necessary to twist logic and emotion and pretend it's a good thing. People rarely seem to make this argument in the context of war, car accidents, cancer treatment, or even any individual death ("I'm so glad she died - it really gave her life meaning"); but lots of people seem to defend death when discussing ageing.
Andrew Steele
Physicist, biologist and YouTuber, author of Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old

Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
Welsh poet and writer

Aging is the main cause of almost all diseases and of death, so accelerating progress in longevity biotechnology is the most altruistic cause one can pursue. We are living in the most exciting moment in human history, as we can significantly increase productive life expectancy within our lifetimes.
Alex Zhavoronkov
Founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine and director of the Biogerontology Research Foundation
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 9

The coming demographic crisis is no longer a surplus of people, but a possible stagnation and reduction of the planet's population. If we analyze the reasons why the world has developed so much in these two centuries, one of the main reasons is precisely the growth of the population. More people think, more people work, more people create, more people innovate, more people discover, more people invent.
José Cordeiro & David Wood
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 132 f.

The right to life is the most important of all human rights. Without life, there is no other right that counts. Today, more than 100,000 people die every day from age-related diseases. This is the greatest crime against humanity, against all people, regardless of ethnicity, gender, nationality, culture, religion, geography or history. We must stop this enormous human tragedy.
José Cordeiro & David Wood
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 12 f.

It is time to open a new path into the future of humanity. It is time to begin a fantastic journey into unending youth. A journey with risks, no doubt, but also full of opportunities. A journey on which it will be necessary to cross several bridges to reach humanity's most ardent dream. A journey from today's linear world into the exponential world of tomorrow.
José Cordeiro & David Wood
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 135

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN after the Second World War - which is perhaps the closest thing we have to a global constitution - categorically states that "the right to life" is humanity's most fundamental value. Since death clearly violates this right, death is a crime against humanity, and we should wage total war against it.
Yuval Noah Harari
Historian
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 25

Would it be absurd, then, to suppose that this improvement can progress indefinitely; to suppose that the time must come when death will be caused only by extraordinary accidents or by the decay of man's vital forces (which becomes slower and slower from generation to generation), and that ultimately the span of time between a person's birth and this decay will no longer have any assignable value?
Marie-Jean-Antoine Nicolas de Caritat
French philosopher
"Der Sieg über den Tod", p. 159

I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.
Heather Whitestone
Miss Alabama 1994 and Miss America 1995
Heather Whitestone's answer to the question of whether she would want to live forever (illustrates the irrationality that often lies behind the rejection of rejuvenation research - see pro-aging trance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-aging_trance)

Image sources of the collage (some photos cropped):