Paul McCartney Quotes

I don't believe in death. I think it's just a state of mind.

When I die, I will not see myself die, for the first time.

To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

What happens after you die? Lot's of things happen after you die - they just don't involve you

If I lack awareness, then why should I care what happens to me when I am dead?

Being dead's only a problem if you know you're dead, which you never do because you're dead!

As soon as one knows one is going to die, childhood is over.... So one can be grown up at seven. Then, I believe most human beings forget what they have understood, recover another sort of childhood that can last all their lives. It is not a true childhood but a kind of forgetting. Desires and anxieties are there, preventing you from having access to the essential truth.

... the way we view death determines, to a surprising degree, the way we live our lives.

For soon the body is discarded, Then what does it feel? A useless log of wood, it lies on the ground, Then what does it know? Your worst enemy cannot harm you As much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, No one can help you as much, Not even your father or your mother.

Ritual disposal of the dead speaks clearly of an awareness of death, and thus an awareness of self.

I think Willa Cather did a short story called "Paul's Case," and in it, when he finally commits suicide, it says, "He surrendered to the black design of things." And that's what I anticipate death will be: a totally unconscious void in which you float through eternity with no particular consciousness of anything. I think once around is enough. I don't want to start it all over again.

I'm simply a nonbeliever and have been forever. ... I'm interested in saying, 'Let us discuss the existential question. We are all going to die, that is the end of all consciousness. There is no afterlife. There is no God. Now what do we do.' That's the point where it starts getting interesting to me.

No other life forms know they are alive, and neither do they know they will die. This is our curse alone. Without this hex upon our heads, we would never have withdrawn as far as we have from the natural—so far and for such a time that it is a relief to say what we have been trying with our all not to say: We have long since been denizens of the natural world. Everywhere around us are natural habitats, but within us is the shiver of startling and dreadful things. Simply put: We are not from here. If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us. Nothing in nature needs us.

If I was dead, I wouldn't know I was dead. That's the only thing I have against death. I want to enjoy my death.

I'm not scared of dying, because I'm an atheist. I won't even know I'm dead. You know why? Because I'll be fùckin' dead.

A species has to become pretty intellectually advanced in order to grasp the concept of death in the abstract, and to dream up the idea of immortality. Long before that (in evolutionary terms) all species with brains have the survival instinct in some form. So, I am just saying that there are many existent proofs of species that have one, but not the other.

How can you be that which you possess? You cannot be the horse and rider at the same time. Herein lies the secret of mortality and immortality.

I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

Living isn't courage, knowing that you're living, that's courage

Being dead will be no different from being unborn -- I shall be just as I was in the time of William the Conqueror or the dinosaurs or the trilobites. There is nothing to fear in that.

There is no God. There's no heaven. There's no hell. There are no angels. When you die, you go in the ground, the worms eat you.

Death is the black backing on the mirror that allows us to see anything at all.

Death is not the end, but the beginning of a new life. Yes, it is an end of something that is already dead. It is also a crescendo of what we call life, although very few know what life is. They live, but they live in such ignorance that they never encounter their own life. And it is impossible for these people to know their own death, because death is the ultimate experience of this life, and the beginning experience of another. Death is the door between two lives; one is left behind, one is waiting ahead.

Either death is a state of nothingness and utter consciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night.