Betty Friedan Quotes

They usually have a piano in every nursing home, and I always wanted to perform for whoever would listen when I learned something. I grew to understand very early that a lot of these people who are in nursing homes are elderly and don't have a lot of things that give them joy from day to day.

Since people are going to be living longer and getting older, they'll just have to learn how to be babies longer.

I want the United Kingdom to be the best place in the world in which to grow old. By ensuring that as many as possible have the opportunity to build up a decent private income for later life we will be well on the way to achieving this.

They say 'life is precious'. To who? To you, when you're young and you've got a few dollars in your pocket. Tell that to the 90-year-old lying awake at the graveyard shift in the nursing home, groaning with dementia. The only reason he hasn't killed himself is that he hasn't figured out a way he can do it with pudding.

Certainly, old age is often incompatible with certain roles and responsibilities.

Florida was a living tomb, she used to tell anyone who'd listen, an old-age home in the shape of a state, God's little waiting room, as she was fond of quoting.

Science has taught us to lengthen life. Now we must learn to make a longer life worth living. Older people deserve choices that let us live out our days as we wish. We've seen people making such choices all over America, and we realize what we might have known from the start: For most of us, there really is no place like home.

Ask who wants to live to be a hundred, and the answer is the person who is ninety-nine.

Old people, who have felt blows and toil and known the world's hard hand, need, even more than children do, a woman's tenderness.

Old people, with other old people, are not so old.

it sucks to get old...but there's always beer

I worry about my nan. If she's alone and falls, does she make a noise? I'm joking, she's dead.

She had to live in this bright, red gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die... I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe.

Old age is life's parody.

No one should be alone in their old age, he thought.

People don't die of old age, they die of neglect.

Pain for the old was no longer a surprise.

There are more old drunks than there are old doctors.

There are more old drunkards than old doctors.

And isn't that weird? Think about this, when you're born, you nurse on your mama. And then you get a little older, you go to applesauce. And then you see these toddlers walking around with these Ziploc baggies full of Cheerios. Then you get to be my age, and the doctor wants you to start eating Cheerios to watch your cholesterol. Then you lose your teeth, you go to applesauce. I now know why old men like women with really big boobs. They see a trend. I mean, they call it a nursing home, hello.

Someone said to me the other day: "Well, you're eventually going to live until 110." And I said: "Well, who's going to keep me? What age do I retire? 100?" How are you going to live all those years and who is going to keep you doing it? I have a couple of grandchildren now so I'm banking on them.

Growing old beats the alternative - dying young.

Old age: The estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours into the Great Sea.

You must prepare yourselves, young people, because Uncle Dave's generation is getting old. We are almost ready to go to the retirement home to spend the rest of our days tapping our bedpans rhythmically in time to "easy listening" rock 'n' roll. We must pass the torch on to you, and you must grasp it, ideally by the end that is not on fire.

When people become elders - when they're older; they can be old without being an elder, really. They [can] just be old and not very useful.