Lifespan Quotes

If lifespan jumps by 30 or 40 years, that has enormous implications. ~ Joshua Lederberg

They say that the average lifespan of an SVU detective is 4 years. People can't do it longer than that because it's so difficult. ~ Mariska Hargitay

The boy will grow older, and over time there will be other songs – not many – ten or maybe twenty in a lifespan, that stand apart from the rest of the music he will discover. He will realise as he grows older still, and crosses the Canadian border and drives down into Seattle, that not only are these songs holy or sacred, they are hiding songs – what the Aztec Indians call carrion songs – that deal exclusively in darkness, obfuscation, concealment and secrecy. He will realize that, for him, the purpose of these songs has been to shut off the sun, to draw a long shadow down and protect him from the corrosive glare of the world. ~ Nick Cave

My abuse will always be part of my memoirs, my past, my history, but will no longer be a front-page in my lifespan ~ Patricia Dsouza

The human resource is limited to the duration of his/ her lifespan, while time is unlimited. ~ Sunday Adelaja

He looked like he'd see the lifespan of the human race a thousand times, and had swallowed its history of violence, of sadness, of loss. ~ Quil Carter

I have been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). It's a terminal disease with an average lifespan of two to five years post-diagnosis, and scientists don't know what causes it. ALS prevents your brain from talking to your muscles. As a result, muscles die. As a result, every 90 minutes people die. I am a person. ~ Steve Gleason

The fact that your lifespan is an infinitesimally tiny fragment in the life of the universe, and that there is, at the very least, a strong possibility that when you die, you disappear completely and forever, and that in five hundred years nobody will remember you and in five billion years the Earth will be boiled into the sun: this can be a profound and defining truth about your existence that you reflexively repulse, that you flinch away from and refuse to accept or even think about, consistently pushing to the back of your mind whenever it sneaks up, for fear that if you allow it to sit in your mind even for a minute, it will swallow everything else. It can make everything you do, and everything anyone else does, seem meaningless, trivial to the point of absurdity. ~ Greta Christina

Books exceed authors' lifespan. ~ Toba Beta

Mitochondria, as we have seen, are only passed on in the egg, so all 13 mitochondrial genes come from our mothers. If these genes really do influence lifespan, and we can only inherit them from our mothers, then our own lifespan should reflect that of our mothers but not our fathers. ~ Nick Lane

We had fallen in love; that was still true. But given the right psychological conditions, a person could fall in love with anyone or anything. A wooden desk - always on all fours, always prone, always there for you. What was the lifespan of these improbable loves? An hour. A week. A few months at best. The end was a natural thing, like the seasons, like getting older, fruit turning. That was the saddest part - there was no one to blame and no way to reverse it. ~ Miranda July

As test documentation goes, test plans have the briefest actual lifespan of any test artifact. Early in a project, there is a push to write a test plan [...]. Indeed, there is often an insistence among project managers that a test plan must exist and that writing it is a milestone of some importance. But, once such a plan is written, it is often hard to get any of those same managers to take reviewing and updating it seriously. The test plan becomes a beloved stuffed animal in the hands of a distracted child. We want it to be there at all times. We drag it around from place to place without ever giving it any real attention. We only scream when it gets taken away. ~ James A. Whittaker

Korum couldn't understand [Connor's] placidity. If Mia had blushed at the touch of another man, that man's lifespan would've been numbered in minutes. ~ Anna Zaires

The average human lifespan compared to the age of the universe is the same as comparing a blink of an eye to that human lifespan. Relatively speaking, short and long lifespans are the same. Both are non-existent compared to the infinite that's ahead. Furthermore, we cannot change the past, and have no guarantees for the future. We are only in charge of the present. The present is nothing - and it is everything. ~ John K. Brown

How shallow is the stage on which this vast drama of human hates and joys and friendships is played! Whence do men draw this passion for eternity, flung by chance as they are upon a scarcely cooled bed of lava, threatened by the beginning by the deserts that are to be, under the constant menace of the snows? Their civilizations are but fragile gildings: a volcano can blot them out, a new sea, a sand-storm. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

I was struck by the image of Daddy still dressed in that same plaid shirt and undershirt with the bloodstains below the neck, the one I had first seen him wearing in the jail the previous day. ~ Earl B. Russell

Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter ... will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age. ~ Lewis Strauss

The last thing you ever want to do is extend the period of frailty and disability and make people unhealthy for a longer time period. So lifespan extension in and of itself should not be the goal of medicine, nor should it be the goal of public health, nor should it be the goal of aging science. ~ S. Jay Olshansky

The dream they dream is beautiful. A dream as bold as your own, or bolder. You want to explore and colonize the universe; they wish to extend the lifespan of the universe beyond all boundaries, to remake its laws, and shape reality to banish entropy, decay, and death forever. I'd like to believe in that dream whether it's true or not. ~ John C. Wright

Surfing is kind of a good metaphor for the rest of life.
The extremely good stuff - chocolate and great sex and weddings and hilarious jokes - fills a minute portion of an adult lifespan.
The rest of life is the paddling: work, paying bills, flossing, getting sick, dying. ~ Jaimal Yogis

But seen through a long lens, peacemaking founded on 'forgetting' appears to have a limited lifespan. ~ Erna Paris

Never in his unlimited lifespan had he ever allowed anyone to call him anything but President Gorlax. Even when he was a fledgling, and not even a president. The other kids hated him for it. He had them killed. ~ Jason Z. Christie

Growing new organs of the body as they wear out, extending the human lifespan? What's not to like? ~ Michio Kaku

Rachael said, "Do you know what the lifespan of a humanoid robot such as myself is? I've been in existence two years. How long do you calculate I have?"
After a hesitation he said, "About two more years."
"They never could solve that problem. I mean cell replacement. Perpetual or anyhow semi-perpetual renewal. Well, so it goes. ~ Philip K. Dick

A great tide of civilization governs how humans do things. When that tide goes out, we centralize, establish command and control structures, and attempt to find efficiencies in large batches and long queues. When the water starts to come back in, we break down those structures, start to drive control down into the hands of 'common' folk, and attempt to find efficiencies in the quick decisions that get made by people closest to the problem. The tide is coming back in and will probably continue to ebb that direction for the lifespan of anyone alive at the time of this writing. ~ Max Guernsey III

We are like fruitflies, measuring everything in terms of our own lifespan. But since our lifespans are so short, our perspective is entirely wrong.
God, who inhabits eternity, sees things differently. He knows that our lives are just a mist. We should trust Him. It was not that long ago that Jesus came and it will not be that long before He returns. ~ Douglas Wilson

The lifespan of human beings is merely a small blip in time. We are temporary visitors on this planet and we should embrace every moment that we are alive. Life is delicate, beautiful and fleeting, make the most of it and never take it for granted. Thank you for reading and be prepared for anything my friends! ~ Frank Montgomery

It made no sense, a lifespan of a few weeks did not add up to an annual migration of many thousand miles. How did they learn where to go? ~ Barbara Kingsolver

The brevity of a human lifespan tormented them as never before, and their hearts soared above the vault of time to join with their descendants and plunge into blood and fire in the icy cold of space, the eventual meeting place for the souls of all soldiers. * ~ Liu Cixin

In one sense, reading is a great waste of time. In another sense, it is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand and one lives in a single lifespan, to watch the great impersonal universe at work again and again, ~ Mary Ruefle

You can't have it all, all at once. Who - man or woman - has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it. ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

What was the lifespan of these improbable loves? An hour. A week. A few months at best. The end was a natural thing, like the seasons, like getting older, fruit turning. That was the saddest part - there was no one to blame and no way to reverse ~ Miranda July

Love should last a lifetime. But not the lifetime of a giant tortoise. More like the lifespan of a gastrotrich. ~ Jarod Kintz

The Japanese have a long lifespan in part because they eat different forms of algae. ~ Homaro Cantu

The fact is that nothing in gerontology even comes close to fulfilling the promise of dramatically extended lifespan, in spite of bold claims to the contrary that by now should sound familiar. ~ S. Jay Olshansky

Toxic relationships are dangerous to your health; they will literally kill you. Stress shortens your lifespan. Even a broken heart can kill you. There is an undeniable mind-body connection. Your arguments and hateful talk can land you in the emergency room or in the morgue. You were not meant to live in a fever of anxiety; screaming yourself hoarse in a frenzy of dreadful, panicked fight-or-flight that leaves you exhausted and numb with grief. You were not meant to live like animals tearing one another to shreds. Don't turn your hair gray. Don't carve a roadmap of pain into the sweet wrinkles on your face. Don't lay in the quiet with your heart pounding like a trapped, frightened creature. For your own precious and beautiful life, and for those around you - seek help or get out before it is too late. This is your wake-up call! ~ Bryant McGill

Although I have suggested that American culture tends to favor the side of independence over the side of inclusion (and I would extend that to Western culture in general), it is not a generalization that seems to apply uniformly to men and women in our culture. Indeed, although I have no idea why it may be, it seems to me that men tend to have more difficulty acknowledging their need for inclusion, tend to me more oriented toward differentiation, and that women tend to have more difficulty acknowledging their need for distinctness, tend to be more oriented toward inclusion. Whether this is a function of social experience throughout the lifespan, the effects of parenting anatomical (even genital) density, or some combination, I do not know. Whatever the source of this distinction between men and women, I believe it is also the case that this very distinction is to be found within any one person as well. Whatever the source of this distinction between men and women, I believe it is also the case that this very distinction is to be found within any one person as well. In this respect constructive-developmental theory revives the Jungian notion that there is a man in every woman and a woman in every man; saying so is both a consequence of considering that all of life is animated by a fundamental evolutionary ambivalence, and that 'maleness'/'femaleness' is but one of its expressions. Similarly, I believe that while Western and Eastern cultures reflect one side or the other of thi ~ Robert Kegan

The number of people with HIV receiving Medicare benefits has grown over time, reflecting growth in the size of the of the HIV positive population in the U.S. but also an increased lifespan for people with HIV due to antiretroviral medicines and other treatment advances. ~ David Mixner

A wedding gown entails multilayering of expensive specialty fabrics for an outfit whose useful lifespan may come and go in a single afternoon. Much like a bomb suit. ~ Mary Roach

A career in entertainment has a lifespan, like one in sport. ~ Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Many things can prolong your life, but only wisdom can save it. ~ Neel Burton

Against this cosmic background the lifespan of a particular plant or animal appears, not as drama complete in itself, but only as a brief interlude in a panorama of endless change. ~ Rachel Carson

What is it like to burn as the humans do? When one's existence can be parcelled and measured in the units that the humans use, what was it? Time. Units of time. Ability to calculate, and live through countable units of time in motion. The physicality of time passing, when one's lifespan is short enough to be able to tangibly experience the passage of time. ~ Teo Yi Han

As James Lovelock writes, 'Mother Earth' is now an old lady in her sixties, no longer as resilient as she once was. With our conscious actions, we are now measurably shortening her lifespan. ~ Mark Lynas

Reducing caloric intake is the only proven method of extending life. If caloric intake is reduced to 20 percent below maintenance, you can extend your lifespan considerably. ~ S. Jay Olshansky

they feel ignored, unappreciated, and unloved. That's because their context-blind Aspie family members are so poor at empathic reciprocity. As we have learned, we come to know ourselves in relation to others. This doesn't just apply when children are developing self-esteem. Throughout our lifespan, we continue to weave and re-weave the context of our lives, based on the interactions we have with our friends, coworkers, neighbors and loved ones. This is why it is so important for an NT parent/partner to get feedback from their spouse. A smile, a hug, a kind word, a note of encouragement: These are messages that reinforce the NT's self-esteem and contribute to a healthy reciprocity in the relationship. Without these daily reminders from their loved ones, NTs can develop some odd defense mechanisms. One is to become psychologically invisible to others and even to themselves. ~ Kathy J. Marshack

We musn't forget old people with their rotten bodies, old people who are so close to death, something that young people don't want to think about. We musn't forget that our bodies decline, friends die, everyone forgets about us, and the end is solitude. Nor must we forget that these old people were young once, that a lifespan is pathetically short, that one day you're twenty and the next day you're eighty. ~ Muriel Barbery

Every day, the New York Times carries a motto in a box on its front page. "All the News That's Fit to Print," it says. It's been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there. Then I check to make sure that it still irritates me. If I can still exclaim, under my breath, why do they insult me and what do they take me for and what the hell is it supposed to mean unless it's as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be, then at least I know I still have a pulse. You may wish to choose a more rigorous mental workout but I credit this daily infusion of annoyance with extending my lifespan. ~ Christopher Hitchens

I used to think death might be hidden somewhere on our bodies.
Tucked behind the pupil like a coin, slid beneath the thumb nail, ribbon-wrapped around a wrist bone. A sharp, dark sliver; a loose, pale pellet. Each person different. Each lifespan set. On the day of your death, it melts out through your entire body, a warm, broken bath bead. Until then, it waits-sealed and silent. ~ Aimee Bender

If shortening my lifespan by a year would kill these guys, I'd do it... ~ Nico Tanigawa

A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it. ~ A.C. Grayling

And I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations. It could be that it would take me 12 more books at six years each to get it - which means I would have to live to be 126. Which I fully intend to do, of course. ~ George Saunders

It was built way back in the Sixties, and with that long lifespan, that capacity year-in year-out, and the inevitable deaths[6], you would think the dorm was haunted. However, from my own experience, it was only ever haunted by the Ghost of the Half Eaten Pizza From a Week Ago or the Spirit of the Guys Two Doors Down Who Think Towels Under the Door Prevents Everybody From Knowing They're Smoking Pot. Real ghosts would have made the place more interesting. ~ Dennis Liggio

The full retirement age is 67 and the lifespan is 80, so when they first conceived Social Security, they didn't think they were going to be paying benefits for 13-15 years. That's one of the reasons why this pyramid scheme isn't working. ~ Joe Heck

The Yellow River is boundless
flowing east without cease
on and on never clearing
while everyone's lifespan ends
and ifyou would ride the clouds
how will you grow wings
unless while your hair is black
you make an effort moving or still ~ Han-shan

I'll never be as old as someone older than me, but I can be older than them if I outlive their lifespan. ~ Jarod Kintz

Interpersonal experience shapes the mind as it continues to develop throughout the lifespan ... Interactions with the environment, especially relationships with other people, directly shape the development of the brain's structure and function. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company's lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people. ~ Elon Musk

Personally I do not believe in world reform. No. I do not believe in any kind of world reform. Not because I consider that the world is perfect as it is - certainly not, the world is crooked and grim and full of suffering - but whoever comes along to reform it soon sinks in rivers of blood. Now let's drink a glass of tea and leave aside these obscenities you've brought me today. If only all religions and all revolutions vanished from the face of the earth someday, I tell you - all of them, without exception - there would be far fewer wars in the world. (p. 68)

Only in one window a feeble light glowed, and he pictured a young rabbinical student sitting there reciting psalms. He said to him in his heart: You and I are both searching for something that has no fixed measure. And for that reason we will not find it even if we search till morning and the next night and every night to come until the day of our death, and maybe after that. (p. 184)

"The eyes," Gershom Wald said, "will never open. Almost everyone traverses their lifespan, from birth to death, with eyes closed. Even you and I, my dear Shmuel. With eyes closed. If we open our eyes for just a moment, a great and terrible cry will burst forth from us and we shall scream and never stop. And if we don't cry out day and night, that's a sign that our eyes are closed... " (p. 192)

Anyone willing to change," Shmuel said, "will always be considered a traitor by those who cannot change and are sca ~ Amos Oz

In the countryside, secrets have a short lifespan ~ Ignazio Silone

Death is nature's way of making things continually interesting. Death is the possibility of change. Every individual gets its allotted lifespan, its chance to try something new on the world. But time is called and the molecules which make up leaf and limb, heart and eye are disassembled and redistributed to other tenants. ~ Peter Steinhart

When I'm working in finite serials, I always think in terms of the entire book rather than the individual episode because, by far, the vaster sector of the project's lifespan will be in complete book form rather than the singles. ~ Warren Ellis

The prodigy who fades is an old story. But the prodigy who sets a high mark when young and then hits that mark, or exceeds it, over and over again, for a full lifespan, is truly remarkable, and worth celebrating. ~ John Baird

Autobiographical memory: Memory across the lifespan for both specific events and self-related information. ~ Alan Baddeley

Corbin wanted, quite simply, to die.
He had wished for death many times over his long lifespan, but never as fervently as he did while Beth Adams rattled off breastfeeding statistics, her baby sucking industriously, mouth fully around the entire areola, as Sam was quick to point out, finger outlining the area in question. Corbin was speechless.
-Corbin at Baby Boot Camp ~ Erin McCarthy

It is sometimes argued that disbelief in a fearful and tempting heavenly despotism makes life into something arid and tedious and cynical: a mere existence without any consolation or any awareness of the numinous or the transcendent. What nonsense this is. In the first place, it commits an obvious error. It seems to say that we ought not to believe that we are an evolved animal species with faulty components and a short lifespan for ourselves and our globe, lest the consequences of the belief be unwelcome or discreditable to us. Could anything show more clearly the bad effects of wish-thinking? There can be no serious ethical position based on denial or a refusal to look the facts squarely in the face. But this does not mean that we must stare into the abyss all the time. (Only religion, oddly enough, has ever required that we obsessively do that.) ~ Christopher Hitchens

The only way to live several lives in one lifespan is to write stories. ~ Vishwas Mudagal

In the world of computers and just devices in general, the lifespan, or the shelf life, is relatively short just because technology moves so fast and the costs drop so quickly and the power, whether it's computing power or memory rises very, very quickly. ~ Nicholas Negroponte

Tech companies have a finite lifespan: For the successful ones, an IPO or exit is never more than a few years off. But by recruiting locally and developing homegrown talent, companies can build something that remains after they're gone. People, skills and a culture of innovation persist. ~ Ryan Holmes

Going meat-free can make a huge difference. Studies show that vegetarians are, on average, 10 to 20 pounds lighter than meat-eaters and that a vegetarian diet reduces our risk of heart disease by 40 percent and adds seven or more years to our lifespan. ~ Ingrid Newkirk

I am confident that when I get really old, the human lifespan will be extended. ~ Jens Voigt

Lifespan extension has never really been a goal of aging science, nor should it. ~ S. Jay Olshansky

Anything you adopt temporarily only begets temporary results, and fluctuating your weight up and down is not lifespan favorable. ~ Joel Fuhrman

the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life span ~ Matthew Walker

Faith in an afterlife was important to Egyptians: they deliberately made their tombs the most permanent part of their built environment, and we find them in their literature very much concerned with what they could know about life after death, judgement and individual survival. Certainly they preserved their religion for most of the lifespan of their language, and they no more actively preached it abroad than they attempted to spread their language when they enlarged the boundaries of their power. But aspects of their faith did spread without the language none the less: their mother-goddess Isis became one of the most widely revered deities in the Roman empire, and has been seen as a root of the Christian cult of Mary as Mother of God. ~ Nicholas Ostler

A person's Acts of #Kindness far outlives their lifespan,for they leave behind a true, meaningful legacy. ~ Michael Levy

Human lifespan used to be 30 years, 25 years. But there's no basic, fundamental reason why it has to be short. ~ Craig Venter

I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations. ~ George Saunders

950 years. After the flood, the lifespan ~ Craig Hines

Ingesting divine cinnabar will make your lifespan inexhaustible. You will last as long as heaven and earth, be able to travel on clouds and ride dragons, and ascend at will to the Heaven of Highest Clarity ~ Ge Hong

Almost everyone traverses their lifespan, from birth to death, with eyes closed. Even you and I, my dear Shmuel. With eyes closed. If we open our eyes for just a moment, a great and terrible cry will burst forth from us and we shall scream and never stop. And if we don't cry out day and night, that's a sign that our eyes are closed. ~ Amos Oz

The rock, for its part, is not even aware of our existence because we are alive for only a brief instant of its lifespan. To it, we are like flashes in the dark. ~ Michael Crichton

Sedentary culture is the goal of civilization. It means the end of its lifespan and brings about its corruption. ~ Ibn Khaldun

According to Abkhazian custom, the time you spend with guests around the table doesn't count toward your lifespan because you're drinking wine and enjoying yourself. ~ Svetlana Alexievich

The time is coming when man will be able to determine the length of his lifespan by controlling his diet. ~ Henry Ford