Human Longevity Quotes

Progress of preventive medicine as a preservative, made more effective by the progress of reason and social order, will eventually banish communicable or contagious illnesses and those diseases in general that originate in climate, food, and the nature of work…a time will come when death would result only from extraordinary accidents or the more and more gradual wearing out of vitality….Cannot the span constantly increase between the moment he begins to live and the time when naturally, without illness or accident, he finds life a burden?

This increase in the world's population represents humanity's victory against death.

People die at 100 years old now. When I was a kid, people died at 67.

In the future, I can imagine that we will genetically modify ourselves using the genes that have doubled our life span since we were chimpanzees.

I think I've achieved some good things; doing the first genome in history - my team on that was phenomenal and all the things they pulled together; writing the first genome with a synthetic cell; my teams at the Venter Institute, Human Longevity, and before that Celera.

While advances in scientific research have led to some new and exciting treatments that have enlarged and enhanced the quality and length of human life, we must not lose sight as to what we are trying to accomplish.

Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?

My dad was an agent for Met Life. In the '50s, I remember the mortality rate was something like - you had - 58 was the average age. Then it was moved up to 62, and then 65, 68.

It is not enough for a great nation merely to have added new years of life—our objective must also be to add new life to those years.

When I am at a dinner table, I love to ask everybody, 'How long do you think our species might last?' I've read that the average age of a species, of any species, is about two million years. Is it possible we can have an average life span as a species? And do you picture us two million years more or a million and a half years, or 5,000?

By the time a man gets well into his seventies his continued existence is a mere miracle.

The public, as a whole, finds reassurance in longevity, and, after the necessary interlude of reaction, is disposed to recognize extreme old age as a sign of excellence. The long-liver has triumphed over at least one of man's initial handicaps: the brevity of life.

The way to make a worm live longer is probably quite different from making a human live longer.

In centenarians and supercentenarians - people over 110 - you see a higher level of fecundity much later in life.

New research shows that you will be dead longer than you will be alive.

The happy problem of our time - longer life.

When you extend life span, that's really something. That's hard to do.

We are living on average today 34 years longer than our great-grandparents did.

Most people understand life expectancy has changed since Social Security started in 1937 when folks lived to be 59 years old. Today, they live to be 77 years old.

The goal here is to triple the lifespan of human beings. We can't have triple the natural resources, so we need to be more efficient.

In the future, will our technologies help stabilise or planet and population, leading to a very long lifetime for us? Or will we destroy our world and its inhabitants, after only a brief appearance on the cosmic stage?

Cloning will enable mankind to reach eternal life.

In Genesis 6:3, it says man can live to be 120, but there is no scientific basis for it.

The leading edge of the best science in the world is being driven by private money, and investment money because of the scarcity of government money to do this. It's not only by far the best and most advanced science, we're driving the equation at Human Longevity that everyone else is beginning to follow as well.

Long lives aren't natural. We forget that senior citizens are as much an invention as toasters or penicillin.