Contempt II

Look, friends, the only possible way to enjoy life is not to be afraid to die. A zest for living requires a willingness to die; you cannot have the first without the second. The '60s and '70s and '80s and '90s can be loaded with the zest for living, high excitement, and gutsy adventure for any truly human person. "Truly human"? I mean you descendants of cavemen who outlasted the saber-tooth, you who sprang from the loins of the Vikings, you whose ancestors fought the Crusades and were numbered the Golden Horde. Death is the lot of all of us and the only way the human race has ever conquered death is by treating it with contempt. By living every golden minute as if one had all eternity.
--Robert Heinlein - Guest of Honor Speech at the XIXth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961