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I neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it. I have no a priori objections to the doctrine. No man who has to deal daily and hourly with nature can trouble himself about a priori difficulties. Give me such evidence as would justify me in believing in anything else, and I will believe that. Why should I not? It is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force or the indestructibility of matter. Thomas Huxley
I do not set my life at a pin’s fee;
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself. William Shakespeare, Hamlet I iv 65-67
I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it. Albert Einstein
What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal. Albert Pike
In android form a human can have practical immortality. Star Trek s1e7: What Are Little Girls Made Of?
Believe me, Captain, immortality consists mostly of boredom. Star Trek s2e9: Metamorphosis, Cochrane
They force immortality on me. And when they do that they cheapen and denigrate my life ... For us the disease is immortality. Star Trek: Voyager s2e18: Death Wish, asylum-seeking Q
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. Woody Allen
cf.
I don’t want to achieve immortality by being inducted into the Hall of Fame. I want to achieve immortality by not dying. William de Morgan
And when he goes beyond the three conditions of nature, which constitute his moral body then, free from birth, old age, and death, and sorrow, he enters into Immortality. Bhagavad Gita: Krishna’s Dialogue on the Soul 14:20
If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Fedor Dostoevsky, 1821-81, The Brothers Karamazov
Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday Afternoon. Susan Ertz, 1894-1985
One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive. Friedrich Nietzsche
Each life makes its own imitation of immortality. Stephen King
The only greatness for man is immortality. James Dean
He ne’er is crowned with immortality
Who fears to follow where airy voices lead. John Keats
No, no, I’m sure,
My restless spirit never could endure
To brood so long upon one luxury,
Unless it did, though fearfully, espy
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream. John Keats, Endymion 1818 I
He ne’er is crowned with immortality
Who fears to follow where airy voices lead. ibid. II
I long to believe in immortality. I shall never be able to bid you an entire farewell. If I am destined to be happy with you here – how short is the longest life. I wish to believe in immortality – I wish to live with you forever. John Keats, letter to Fanny Brawne July 1820
Once in one’s life, for one mortal moment, one must make a grab for immortality; if not, one has not lived. Sylvester Stallone
My music will go on for ever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on for ever. Bob Marley
Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality. John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra
I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity of speculating upon another. Lord Byron, letter to Francis Hodgson 3 September 1811
He had decided to live for ever or die in the attempt. Joseph Heller, Catch-22 1961
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Building of the Ship l375
For who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallow’d up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion? John Milton, Paradise Lost II:146
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep. ibid.
They eat, they drink, and in communion sweet
Quaff immortality and joy. ibid. V:637
For spirits that live throughout
Vital in every part, not as frail man,
In entrails, heart or head, liver or reins,
Cannot but by annihilating die. ibid. VI:345
The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal ... We feel and know by experience that we are eternal. Baruch Spinoza, Ethics V:23
Immortality! We bow before the very term. Immortality! Before it reason staggers, calculation reclines her tired head, and imagination folds her weary pinions. Immortality! It throws open the portals of the vast forever; it puts the crown of deathless destiny upon every human brow; it cries to every uncrowned king of men, ‘Live forever, crowned for the empire of a deathless destiny!’ George Douglas
But felt through all this fleshly dresse
Bright shootes of everlastingnesse. Henry Vaughan, The Retreate
[Facte nova virtute, puer; sic itur ad astra]: Go on and increase in valor, O boy! this is the path to immortality. Virgil, Aeneid IX:641
What a world were this,
How unendurable its weight, if they
Whom Death hath sundered did not meet again! Robert Southey, Inscription XVII: epitaph
And now have I finished a work which neither the wrath of Jove, nor fire, nor steel, nor all-consuming time can destroy. Welcome the day which can destroy only my physical man in ending my uncertain life. In my better part I shall be raised to immortality above the lofty stars, and my name shall never die. Ovid, Metamorphoses XV:871
The end of life: it’s a reality that terrifies us and motivates us. Now cutting-edge science embarks on a bold mission to extend human life … Will death remain inevitable or can we live for ever? Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole s2e9, Can We Live For Ever? Science 2011
Anything and everything in the universe has the tendency to go from order to disorder … Nothing is immune to the power of entropy. ibid.
Death is our ultimate destination: a place from which no-one ever returns. But what if death wasn’t the end? Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole s3e6, Can We Resurrect the Dead?
What if we could grow the dead back to life? ... Can we cultivate a garden of resurrected humans? ibid.
Are we born to die? For millennia we’ve tried to outsmart our own mortality only to find that death is the greatest certainty, but for the first time in history that may be about to change. Science is unravelling the mysteries of ageing. Discovering an animal that comes back from the dead, and turning our quest for eternal life on its head. Are we about to enter the age of immortality or is death necessary for the survival of our species? Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole s7e2: Can We Cheat Death?