There are really very important differences between the type of creativity involved in being a scientist and being a technical engineer. It means that I’m able to think in very different ways and come up with approaches to things that are different from the way a basic scientist might think.

Aubrey de Grey

Accept the difficulty of what you cannot yet change. But do not accept the impossibility of ever changing it.

Aubrey de Grey

impossibility difficulty accepting

The right to choose to live or to die is the most fundamental right there is; conversely, the duty to give others that opportunity to the best of our ability is the most fundamental duty there is.

Aubrey de Grey

fundamentals opportunity giving

It's not just about life, of course; it's about healthy life. Getting frail and miserable and dependent is no fun, whether or not dying may be fun.

Aubrey de Grey

motivation inspiration fun

[Anti-aging therapies will] never be perfect, but we'll be able to fix the things that 200-year-olds die of before we have any 200-year-olds, and the same for 300 and 400 and so on.

Aubrey de Grey

motivation inspiration years

My approach is to start from the straightforward principle that our body is a machine. A very complicated machine, but none the less a machine, and it can be subjected to maintenance and repair in the same way as a simple machine, like a car.

Aubrey de Grey

car principles simple

Basically, the body does have a vast amount of inbuilt anti-ageing machinery; it's just not 100% comprehensive, so it allows a small number of different types of molecular and cellular damage to happen and accumulate.

Aubrey de Grey

damage body numbers

Celebrating the future is about celebrating a better world: a world in which everyone's life is easier and their health is maintained longer. It’ll be a life where there’s more time for leisure - for enriching each other’s lives rather than just running to stand still. In other words, more holiday time! So a holiday is absolutely the appropriate way to help us focus on it and make it a reality soon.

Aubrey de Grey

holiday running reality

If changing our world is playing God, it is just one more way in which God made us in His image.

Aubrey de Grey

our-world made way

Theres no such thing as ageing gracefully. I dont meet people who want to get Alzheimers disease, or who want to get cancer or arthritis or any of the other things that afflict the elderly. Ageing is bad for you, and we better just actually accept that.

Aubrey de Grey

elderly cancer people

There is no difference between saving lives and extending lives, because in both cases we are giving people the chance of more life.

Aubrey de Grey

differences giving people

What I actually wanted to do with my life is make a difference to the world. That led me into science very quickly.

Aubrey de Grey

making-a-difference differences world

The biggest handicap in research is an ability to think outside the box. The handicap is being encumbered by all the conventional wisdom in a given field.

Aubrey de Grey

fields research thinking

What I'm after is not living to 1,000. I'm after letting people avoid death for as long as they want to.

Aubrey de Grey

want long people

If you look at winners of the Nobel Prize in biology, you'll find a fair smattering of people who don't know how to work a pipette.

Aubrey de Grey

winner people looks

The aim is to postpone frailty, postpone degenerative disease, debilitation and so on and thereby shorten the period at the end of life, which is passed in a decrepit or disabled state, while extending life as a whole.

Aubrey de Grey

decrepit end-of-life disease

I think it's reasonable to suppose that one could oscillate between being biologically 20 and biologically 25 indefinitely.

Aubrey de Grey

reasonable thinking

Ageing is, simply and clearly, the accumulation of damage in the body. That's all that ageing is.

Aubrey de Grey

accumulation damage body

I don't work on longevity, I work on keeping people healthy.

Aubrey de Grey

longevity healthy people

I dont often meet people who want to suffer cardiovascular disease or whatever, and we get those things as a result of the lifelong accumulation of various types of molecular and cellular damage.

Aubrey de Grey

disease suffering people

The scientific method actually correctly uses the most direct evidence as the most reliable, because that's the way you are least likely to get led astray into dead ends and to misunderstand your data.

Aubrey de Grey

scientific-method data way