“The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.”
Growing older changes how we see everything — time, love, ambition, regret. These quotes capture the full arc of aging, from the stubborn optimism of youth to the hard-earned clarity that only comes with years behind you. Whether you are twenty and curious or eighty and reflective, there is something here that will land.
“Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older, I begin each day with coffee and obituaries.”
“The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.”
“I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.”
“At this age, I should be leading a quiet life.”
“Temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.”
“Age is the first limitation on roles that I've ever had to encounter, and I hit that awhile ago.”
“Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.”
“We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.”
“The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.”
“I didn't know a time when there wasn't a war because I spent all my time from the age of two or three to eight in a coal cellar really.”
“People say women shouldn't have long hair over a certain age, but I've never done what everyone says.”
“We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.”
“I feel we live in the kind of culture now where you have to be very smart to navigate the right way, and I just don't have those smarts. I think with age and time it will change, but I can't obsess about it.”
“A lot of music you might listen to is pretty vapid, it doesn't always deal with our deeper issues. These are the things I'm interested in now, particularly at my age.”
“I wear clothes that most people in the Midwest would probably deem inappropriate at my age. And I rock a bikini all summer long. I know that it's not normal, but I just don't care. I live once.”
“Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.”