Quotes from Alan Harrington

We must never forget that we are cosmic revolutionaries, not stooges conscripted to advance a natural order that kills everybody.

The philosophy that accepts death must itself be considered dead, its questions meaningless, its consolations worn out.

The immortalist thesis is that the time has come for the race to get rid of the intimidating gods in its own head -- grow up out of our cosmic inferiority complex (no more dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return...), bring our disguised desire into the open, and go after what we want, the only state of being we will settle for, which is divinity.

Our conception of immortality now requires precise definition. What must be eliminated from the human situation is the inevitability of death as a result and natural end of the aging process. I am speaking of the inescapable parabolic arching from birth to death. But we must clearly understand that any given unit of life -- my individual existence and yours -- can never be guaranteed eternity.

We have long since gone beyond the moon, touched down on Mars, the moon, harnessed nuclear energy, artificially reproduced DNA, and now have the biochemical means to control birth; why should death itself, the Last Enemy, be considered sacred and beyond conquest?