Craig Venter Quotes

… we have one life on this planet. We have one chance to live it and to contribute to the future of society and the future of life. The only "afterlife" is what other people remember of you.

A theory of personal resurrection or reincarnation of the individual is untenable when we but pause to consider the magnitude of the idea. On the contrary, I must believe that rather than the survival of all, we must look for survival only in the spirit of the good we have done in passing through.Once obsolete, an automobile is thrown to the scrap heap. Once here and gone, the human life has likewise served its purpose. If it has been a good life, it has been sufficient. There is no need for another.

We will all be gone one day. Not as a negative thing - as a positive thing, too, you know, and we should leave something behind ourselves.

Ultimately, I think, as humans, we all care deeply about our life's legacy, and contemplating our own mortality is the only real way to approach that question of legacy honestly.

Everyone dies. It is how one lives that matters.

We're all worm bait waiting to happen. It's what you do while you wait that matters.

You weren't put on earth to be remembered. You were put here to prepare for eternity.

I like to think that death gives life meaning. I like that philosophy.

Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation

I believe that this life is all we have. I don't believe in anything after this, so I think the choices we make here are so important and the relationships we choose are crucial, especially in that time when we are developing ourselves and we're becoming adults.

The most important philosophy I think is that even if it isn't true you must absolutely assume there is no afterlife.

Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.

I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep.

I hope, when I stop, people will think that somehow I mattered.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.

At the end of our lives we all ask, 'Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?'

Who cares about great marks left behind? We have one life... just one. Our life. We have nothing else.

Well, I think the main message is there is more to your story. There is more than what happens between the crib and the grave, and that is what I am really trying to speak to, this idea that all of life is this life and that there is nothing more than what we see and experience right here on this earth.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

Whenever you're talking about meaning, basically... I think a lot of the human experience has to do with trying to understand what things mean, and there's not really any tools to do that unless you're thinking about it in a more spiritual or philosophical realm.

I am really curious about life, about why we are all here. I notice my skin is ageing, things are changing, I've seen people dying, so that's the train we are all on.

We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we want another which will be eternal.

Behind every citizen lies a graveyard.

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.