High Mortality Quotes

Most people my age are dead at the present time and you can look it up.

I've dodged so many bullets. Not just because of unsafe sex, but because of the amount of drugs I did, the amount of alcohol, the amount of work I was doing. I started the Elton John AIDS Foundation because I got so lucky.

What reason is there for believing that a high death rate, in itself, is undesirable? To my knowledge none whatever. The plain fact is that, if it be suitably selective, it is extremely salubrious. Suppose it could be so arranged that it ran to 100% a year among politicians, executive secretaries, drive chairmen, and the homicidally insane? What rational man would object?

Times before you, when even the living men were Antiquities; when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world, could not be properly said, to go unto the greater number.

It's a cruel reality. But after a week, very few people survive.

A lot of people die in my movies. So if you're in a few of my movies, you have a good chance of dying!

I saw a lot of children who were in the latest stages of malaria. Those kids died very quickly.

More generally, people who lived in a period when maternal, infant and childhood mortality were still high would have been tougher than most of us can imagine.

An ordinary life used to look something like this: born into a growing family, you help rear your siblings, have the first of your own half-dozen or even dozen children soon after you're grown, and die before your youngest has left home.

In 1900, 180-plus out of every 1,000 African-American babies died.