Welcome to our collection of poignant and insightful quotes about the elderly. Aging is a natural part of life’s journey, and throughout history, individuals have shared their wisdom, humor, and reflections on the experience of growing older. Whether offering profound insights into the passage of time, celebrating the resilience of the human spirit, or simply poking fun at the quirks of old age, these quotes resonate with people of all ages, reminding us of the value and significance of every stage of life.
The words of wisdom from various authors, philosophers, and cultural icons capture the essence of the elderly experience, shedding light on the joys, challenges, and profound truths that come with aging. From humorous anecdotes that bring a smile to our faces to profound reflections that inspire introspection, these quotes offer a glimpse into the rich tapestry of human existence. Explore the timeless wisdom and wit encapsulated in these quotes, and let them serve as a source of inspiration, reflection, and appreciation for the elderly among us.
If you want to write something of length, however modern and radical, you must live the life of an elderly gentleman of the 1950s. Arthur Smith
The government, of course, will print money to bail out the banks’ uncovered casino bets, but not to bail out the elderly from the theft of their funds. Paul Craig Roberts
It has to have a payroll tax that’s dedicated to Social Security. The Social Security tax has been very successful over the years in raising almost all of our elderly citizens out of poverty. James Roosevelt
If Copenhagen were a person, that person would be generous, beautiful, elderly, but with a flair. A human being that has certain propensities for quarrelling, filled with imagination and with appetite for the new and with respect for the old – somebody who takes good care of things and of people. Connie Nielsen
I’ve seen so many patients, particularly elderly patients, over the years who become debilitated and changed by the process by which I cure them or another doctor cures them. And has it really been worth it? Sherwin B. Nuland
When both my parents were unwell I was in that situation that will be very familiar to many women. I had young children in one part of the country, and elderly unwell parents in another. I was in a constant state of guilt. Was I there enough for my mother? Was I there enough for my children? Fiona Bruce
Hollywood does not write parts for people like me, an elderly gentleman, and when they find out you’re crippled, forget about it. No, I’ll never work again. Ricardo Montalban
I am a huge admirer of Franklin Roosevelt’s, and I believe social security has done untold good in alleviating the once-widespread issue of poverty among the elderly. FDR believed in the greatness and generosity of Americans – but he was also a cold-blooded politician. Jon Meacham
There’s no such thing as ageing gracefully. I don’t meet people who want to get Alzheimer’s 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
Obviously, you look for something that is commensurate with your age. You know that you can’t be playing the young hero anymore, and you have to be relegated to something smaller and something elderly, and you just try and do your best. Amitabh Bachchan
I think that society has to be careful not to shift all of its resources to the elderly versus the young. Bill Gates
I wrote about Herschell in my book ‘Shock Value,’ for which I interviewed him. We became friends; I had dinner with Herschell the last year before he died. He was elderly, but his mind was perfectly intact. John Waters
There are no Hollywood stars speaking out for the elderly. They’re forgotten, bewildered, and I don’t think it’s because people are cruel or don’t care. It’s because you don’t want to think about your own mortality. I think people don’t talk about it enough. Ricky Gervais
I say the law should be blind to race, gender and sexual orientation, just as it claims to be blind to wealth and power. There should be no specially protected groups of any kind, except for children, the severely disabled and the elderly, whose physical frailty demands society’s care. Camille Paglia
Traditionally, Medicare’s assurance has been that for the elderly and persons with disabilities that they will not be alone when confronted with the full burden of their health care costs. Mike Fitzpatrick
In fact, Social Security is the only source of income nationwide for 29 percent of unmarried elderly women. Ginny Brown-Waite
Whether you are a low-income elderly woman living at the end of a dirt road in Vermont or a wealthy CEO living on Park Avenue, you get your mail six days a week. And you pay for this service at a cost far less than anywhere else in the industrialized world. Bernie Sanders
Life expectancy in many parts of Africa can be something around the age of thirty five to thirty eight. I mean you’re very fortunate if you live to that age. In fact when I went to Uganda for the first time one of the things that occurred to me was that I saw very few elderly people. Annie Lennox
I know more about what it’s like to be elderly and infirm and kind of stupid, the way you get forgetful, but on the other hand I’m a littler, wiser, dare we say? The word ‘wisdom’ has kind of faded out of our vocabulary, but yeah, I’m a little wiser. John Updike
I know what I write about seems exotic to a lot of people, but not for me. I pulled up to an old trading post and saw a few elderly Navajos sitting on a bench. I felt right at home. Tony Hillerman
Whereas in America we are so fearful of mortality, we don’t want to talk about it, we don’t think about it, and in many ways we treat elderly people as invisible because they are a constant reminder of our own mortality. We put them away and put them in retirement homes so we don’t want to deal with that. Lulu Wang
We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities. Barbra Streisand
As the technology is developed, autonomous driving could provide driving opportunities for the physically challenged or enable the elderly to continue driving longer. This will be vital as many nations experience an aging population. William Clay Ford, Jr.
Teenagers ultimately don’t mind belonging to a group, because there’s always the opportunity to eventually become someone new. The elderly, by definition, are running out of opportunities for reinvention. Charles Duhigg
Social Security is one of the greatest achievements of the American government, protecting our elderly against poverty and assuring young people of a more secure future. Mark Foley
During my time at Essex county fire and rescue service, barely a shift went by without receiving a call from an elderly person who had fallen in their home, or from their concerned neighbour or carer. Jack Monroe
It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped. Hubert H. Humphrey
I’ve skewered whites, blacks, Hispanics, Christians, Jews, Muslims, gays, straights, rednecks, addicts, the elderly, and my wife. As a standup comic, it is my job to make sure the majority of people laugh, and I believe that comedy is the last true form of free speech. Jeff Dunham
Without Social Security benefits, more than 40 percent of Americans 65 years and older would live below the federal poverty line. Even more striking is that Social Security is the only source of retirement income for almost a quarter of elderly beneficiaries. Mike Quigley
Music is nothing but a door opener to meet families and their children and the elderly. Dick Dale
As the United States has become an older nation, reverse mortgages have grown into a $20-billion-a-year industry, with elderly homeowners taking out more than 132,000 such loans in 2007, an increase of more than 270 percent from two years earlier. Charles Duhigg
Flexible working is not just for women with children. It is necessary at the other end of the scale. If people can move into part-time work, instead of retirement, then that will be a huge help. If people can fit their work around caring responsibilities for the elderly, the disabled, then again that’s very positive. Theresa May
You can’t predict when a crisis might hit your family, whether it’s with an elderly parent or with your children. Nancy Gibbs
Doesn’t matter whether it’s a teen girl who’s pregnant, hasn’t told her parents, or an elderly couple dealing with one of them being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Those are real people to me. Those are the people I dealt with every single day. Mike Huckabee
Germany, I think, was first to substitute a Social Security program for its elderly based on this premise, that is, that we would tax workers to pay retirement benefits for those retired. John Shadegg
A lasting marriage, they say, is one where the two reach for different sections of the Sunday paper. Me, I go right for the obituaries, just like those very elderly characters in Muriel Spark’s spooky novel, ‘Memento Mori.’ Billy Collins
I think our elderly are forgotten sometimes. Ricky Gervais
I started doing some interviews with elderly people in the family because I knew they would pass away and we would lose the power of their story. Anthony Shadid
One of the things in Obamacare is that for the elderly, is every five years, you must have end-of-year counseling. Translation, ‘suicide counseling.’ Rafael Cruz
I believe that the role of limited government should be looking after the needs of veterans, the elderly, children and those institutions that improve the quality of life for struggling families – I don’t believe that government should bend to serve the needs of subsidized multi-national corporations and entitled billionaires. Moby
So my father grew up in an orphanage in Boston. He was then adopted by an elderly childless couple from Maine, who gave him the name of Mitchell. He moved to Maine, and there he met my mother and was married. George J. Mitchell
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Arthur C. Clarke
I had always been literary, in the sense of loving poetry and discovering novels, but I found my voice, as they say, in an office full of elderly people who looked after blind ex-servicemen. Andrew O’Hagan
Let me be clear – I want all Louisiana citizens to have choice – including the elderly and persons with disabilities – and their families – who rely on the state for their care. Kathleen Blanco
Each one of us can do a good deed, every day and everywhere. In hospitals in desperate need of volunteers, in homes for the elderly where our parents and grandparents are longing for a smile, a listening ear, in the street, in our workplaces and especially at home. Shari Arison
The Europeans have lots of data on the use of adjuvanted flu vaccine in the elderly, but I don’t think anybody has really good data on adjuvants in children. Anthony Fauci
I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children’s stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, ‘Can’t you write anything normal?’ Octavia E. Butler
As the nation’s elderly population grows, dozens of industries have tried to harness the political might of older Americans for corporate goals. Charles Duhigg
A lot of kids do look up to us. But there are just as many elderly people to put us down. Donnie Wahlberg
Some writing and production projects will be a great way to spend my elderly rock years. Geddy Lee
Obamacare is going to destroy the elderly by denying care, by even perhaps denying treatment to people who are in catastrophic circumstances. Rafael Cruz
To those seniors, and especially elderly veterans like myself, I want to tell you this: You are not alone, and you having nothing to be ashamed of. If elder abuse happened to me, it can happen to anyone. I want you to know that you deserve better. Mickey Rooney
I don’t think films about elderly people have been made very much. Maggie Smith
Did you hear the one about the elderly Jew on his deathbed who sent for a priest, after declaring to his astonished relatives that ‘I want to convert.’ Asked why he would become a Catholic, after living all his life as a Jew, he answered: ‘Better one of them should die than one of us.’ Alan King
The dissemination of advanced implantable technology will likely be just as ruthlessly democratic as the ailments it is destined to treat. Meaning that, someday soon, we may have a new class of very smart, very fast people – yesterday’s disabled and elderly. Daniel H. Wilson
I love gay Mardi Gras in Sydney, which is a big parade, a big march that thousands and thousands of people participate in. And there’s one little group… well it’s not little, it’s got hundreds of people marching, and they’re all very sweet, middle-aged and elderly people who are the parents of gay children who are out and proud. Jacki Weaver
Generally, the younger the victim, the greater the grief. Yet even when the elderly or infirm have been afforded merciful relief, their loved ones are rarely ready to let go. Russell M. Nelson
Many seniors understand that Social Security is social insurance as opposed to a program where we put money aside for our own retirement. But most elderly individuals think they’re getting their money back. So it isn’t selfishness as much as a misunderstanding. Richard Lamm
I remember once having to stop performing when I thought an elderly man a few rows back from the front was actually going to die because he was laughing so hard. Adrian Edmondson
If I were mayor, I’d invite everyone to have free boat trips on the river and free balloon rides over the city. I’d let the elderly in residential homes wander free. Jane Birkin
It would be better, in a way, if any adults present were completely uneducated. There is nothing children like more than passing on information they have just discovered to people who may not already have it – an elderly grandmother, for instance. Sugata Mitra
Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness. A policy to reduce the loneliness of the elderly would certainly reduce suffering. Daniel Kahneman
Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate. Bertrand Russell
The elderly are all someone’s flesh and blood and we cannot just shut them in a cupboard and hand over the responsibility for taking care of them to the state. Simon Callow
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Arthur C. Clarke
Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young have usually so little fear of death; they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten. Lewis Mumford
The people who depend on an antenna are often those who are underprivileged – the elderly and the disadvantaged who can’t afford a $200-a-month cable bill. Gordon Smith
While journalists cannot right every wrong, champion every cause or fix every problem, they can – through the written word – lift someone’s burden for a day, make some elderly woman on a bus smile or let them know they are noticed by someone. Regina Brett
Like all good citizens, the elderly and people with disabilities want to eradicate waste and fraud from government, but helping people with special needs meet their basic needs doesn’t fit this description. Joni Eareckson Tada
I suppose the only thing at 50 you can really start to look forward to is just total irresponsibility. As you get older, you can just sit in a chair, wear anything you want, you know you can walk down; old people dress cool. You know they wear sweatpants. The elderly have it down. Johnny Depp
Elderly parents tend to think their relationship with their middle-aged children is smoother than the children do. Adult grandchildren, who have little stake in pulling away from their grandparents, tend to describe that relationship as less rose-colored than do Gram and Gramps. Robin Marantz Henig
Nobody with an IQ higher than emergency-room temperature could ever believe that ‘death panels’ would be appointed to nudge the elderly toward euthanasia. Yet for idle entertainment, it’s hard to beat Sarah Palin’s ignorant nattering on the subject. Carl Hiaasen
After-school tutoring programs, care for the elderly, shelters for the homeless, disaster relief work, and a variety of other services would all benefit from government funding. Tony Campolo
When I’ve ridden in parades, I always throw to the kids, the elderly and anyone who is smiling and having a great time. I try to make eye contact with the person. If you catch a ton and a kid nearby hasn’t caught much, share. Bryan Batt
The way the elderly are treated, and in some cases warehoused and medicated, rather than nurtured and listened to, is distressing. Bill Nighy
You see these casting directors’ lists of characters, and they’re all boxed in. Twenties is the hot girlfriend, thirties you can still be hot but moving swiftly to hot mum. Forties, you’re the legal person in a pantsuit. Then, once you reach your fifties, you’re positively elderly. Thandie Newton
Do the elected officials in Washington stand with ordinary Americans – working families, children, the elderly, the poor – or will the extraordinary power of billionaire campaign contributors and Big Money prevail? The American people, by the millions, must send Congress the answer to that question. Bernie Sanders
I had real plans for my next decade and felt I’d worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read – if not indeed write – the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger? Christopher Hitchens
But I think people see ‘Wallace and Gromit’ as something akin to an elderly couple. These two know each other so well. Nothing can split them apart. Nick Park
Germany’s Angela Merkel exudes an atmosphere of elderly exhaustion and pooped-out pessimism. Britain’s David Cameron, though by nature exuberant, feels he has to look and sound glum. And France’s leader, Francois Hollande, seems determined to drive every successful businessman out of the country. Paul Johnson
I believe that if you are elderly, physically or mentally handicapped we have an obligation too you, but if you are able-bodied, you should be working. Alphonso Jackson
It’s true I don’t tolerate fools but then they don’t tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that’s why I’m quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies. Maggie Smith
When I talk about democratic socialist, I am talking about Medicare, a single payer health care system for the elderly. And in my view, we should expand that concept to all people. I believe that everybody in this country should be entitled to health care as a right. Bernie Sanders
Poverty is terror. Having your Social Security threatened is terror. Having your livelihood as an elderly person slowly disappearing with no replenishment is terror. Harry Belafonte
I cannot forget a conversation that I had with an elderly couple from the tribe. They asked me whether I would kill them after I had finished. When I asked them why they asked that, they replied, Because you white men always do! Roland Joffe
And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly. Paul Ryan
Many Americans are unaware that we still have a large population of working families, elderly, and children who rely on emergency food pantries, shelters, and other resources to meet their nutritional needs. Blanche Lincoln
The Republicans want to turn Medicare into a voucher plan that will end guaranteed coverage of medical bills for the elderly. Juan Williams
Anything that we can do to improve the lives of elderly people is welcome so far as I am concerned. Judi Dench
What about those who help growth indirectly, those who stay at home and look after others – mothers, carers of elderly parents or sick relatives who save the state millions of pounds annually. What is their worth? How is their value to be determined? Noreena Hertz
Everyone dies, and before that, most people eventually lose some of their faculties. So some people worry that as marketers get better at targeting the elderly, the line between advertising and unscrupulous manipulation will be harder to discern. Charles Duhigg
Cancer has taught me a lot of things. Maybe it is the best thing that has happened to me. I can’t say right now, but maybe some years down the line, I would realise. When I was taking chemotherapy, there were a lot of elderly patients, and that would inspire me. I thought, ‘If they can be cured, why can’t I be?’ Yuvraj Singh
Too many of the elderly do not have the family or the communal attachments necessary to feel valued; too many are widowed or otherwise alone; too many live in surroundings where they are essentially without the companionship necessary to stimulate a mind in danger of deteriorating. Sherwin B. Nuland
And as a child I was filled with passionate admiration for acts of civic courage I had seen performed by an elderly military doctor, who was a friend of my family. Rene Cassin
As pressure grows to ease the financial burden on social security, pressure will also grow to eliminate the elderly and infirm to ‘free up’ more money for the ‘fit’ and those who contribute more than they take from society. Cal Thomas
My mom is elderly, and she’s not doing too well, and I’ve literally never told her about ‘Childrens Hospital,’ because I fear that if she ever sees it, it will be like the coup de grace. Megan Mullally
My family kept its history to itself. On the plus side, I didn’t have to hear nightmarish stories about the Holocaust, the pogroms, terrible illnesses, painful deaths. My elderly parents never even spoke about their ailments. Amy Bloom
Everybody gets sick; everybody has had a problem with insurance or the prescription drugs they’re supposed to be taking or an elderly parent who needs care. Michael Moore
I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost. Terry Pratchett
A universal basic income would be the best way to give everyone the opportunity to do more unpaid but incredibly important work, such as caring for children and the elderly. Rutger Bregman
