“We are helping make aging better, for aging is everybody’s business and everybody’s future.”

“Don’t get old. Grow…and don’t stop growing. Only when you stop growing are you old.”

"As it is, when you leave a job, they often just give you a gold watch, and all you can do is look at it and count the hours until you die. Yet think of all the grand things we can do that youth can't. Think of all the things we already have done. Someday, the retired citizens of this country will have the dignity they deserve."

“The false assumption that aging is all decrement, added to the fact of no recognition of the continued maturation and development of skills and understanding, is destructive to the drive of older persons to maintain their usefulness and health.”

“We have the physical equipment for the good life, but we need not only heart but empathy. It is tied in with feeling. If we haven’t it, we can develop it. We must believe and have faith in ourselves and what we can do for each other. The choice is ours.”

“We can paint you a picture of older people who know that age isn’t a punishment and a penalty but is a privilege. They hold that every year comes to us as a merit badge, something of esteem that might be considered a feather in one’s cap, and say, ‘We are the accomplished ones; we’ve lived, and we’re proud of it…every year.’ To them, life is a victory and not a defeat.”

Quoting Dr. Gregor Ziemer: “We’re not ‘oldsters,’ we’re ‘people,’ the same as everybody else. And we’re not in our ‘Golden Years’. Our years are the same as everyone else’s — we are just trying to do more with them.”

“Old people are tough. They have to be to have lived this long.”

“Aging is an achievement. The later years have meaning and purpose. Activity is life, and work is one’s salvation.”

“The older American is as unique an individual as he or she was as a teenager. It is as hard to categorize older folk as it is to categorize youngsters. Even in youth, some were eager beavers — alert, vital, and serviceable. It is perhaps these, now mellowed by compassion and enriched by the experience, who hold the community and the nation to correct some oversights and misdirections.”

“We earnestly seek not eternal youth but a constantly increasing maturity, the wisdom that will not need or seek praise, striving to realize each day a little more of our goals — goals of helpful, happy, and enjoyable living and of growth.”

“We hope that the man in the street and the lad in the school may come to look upon aging as a source of inspiration and a resource to be used, not only for leisured reminiscence of days and deeds gone by, but also for prophetic forecasting of things to come, to dream about, to realize.”

“As older Americans, we’re challenged to do something to help our communities… We mustn’t be afraid, but proud of the word ‘old’.”

“Let’s glory in being old. We who are older have the right and the responsibility to keep on living in the stream of life.”

“We don’t just get old—we grow old—we mature. There is nothing grander than growing old. Hold your years as merit badges you have earned, as awards for experience and achievement. Let us remember maturity is not static. With our years come changes in the philosophy of age. No longer through preachment does old age achieve dignity and respect. Achievement rests with the older person himself.”

“Longevity and health are not inherent rights; these privileges carry an obligation to earn them. The oldster must stop thinking of the treatment of his ills as merely applying a temporary patch to a worn fabric. He must think positively how to keep that fabric in shape for long a comfortable use. He need not put up with handicaps and infirmities that can be fixed.”

“Maturing is the product of years of living fully. Neither youthful zest nor the accomplishments of spectacular college life can produce the vital equipment that comes only with the ripening of years. That is the crown that dynamic maturity earns. That is the glory of age.”

“As we age, sometimes we grow apprehensive and fearful at [time’s] speed and the uncertain shortness of our stay, that we waste it, trading existence for living.”

“Such to me is the new image of aging: growth in self and service for all mankind.”

Dr. Andrus says she’s “terribly grieved” at the attitudes many young people have toward growing old. “There are some wonderful things about it, and it can be a rich time for anyone who realizes it.”

“If you call me a ‘Senior Citizen,’ I’ll call you a ‘Junior Citizen.” That will fix you!”

“Older people want to give and be respected for what they are instead of what they were. They want to be proud of growing old — proud of every year.”

Quoting the poet Bailey in Festus:

“We live in deeds, not years.”

Quoting Longfellow:

Age is opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress,

And as the evening twilight fades away

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, US poet (1807 - 1882)

“Unless the world that calls us senior citizens wants to be dubbed as junior citizens, they are putting us aside and thinking that the lovely strong words “age” and “aging” as something that must be camouflaged, must be deodorized, must be made respectable. This we regret and feel is a pity, a disservice.”

“I don’t want to be called a senior citizen unless you want to be called a junior citizen. If I’m an old woman, you’re a young man. Those who segregate the nation’s older people with the use of the term ‘senior citizen ’have employed a regrettable and misleading stereotype, “which can become, in time, a boomerang to its makers, who someday, too, will be old.”

The author, Scott Hart, on Dr. Andrus: “Age can be what one makes of it. She, herself, exemplified her aim: dynamic maturity.”

“The people who live to an old age are those with reason to live.”

“Retired persons are considered walking hospitals. But that’s not a true picture of old age today. We shouldn’t dread it. We’re lucky to be old.”

“Every grey hair I have is a kind of merit badge.”

“Let’s not grieve at growing older. Let us only grieve if we stop growing. Age is inevitable; the only way to avoid it is to die young. For those of us who have made the grade, maturity is an asset. It is for each of us to demonstrate how our family, our town, and our state is better for our living. There is much that we can do; there is much to be done. We must first fool (heed) the call of service. Then remember the words of that kindly humorist of yesteryear, George Ade, ‘Those who give, get.’”

“We believe age is an achievement, not a tragedy. The latter years, we contend, have much meaning and great promise. Activity is life, and work is our salvation. We are living proof that the elderly can proudly go on serving as an integral, serviceable, and respected part of their communities.”

“What we do, we do for all.”

“We learn the inner secret of happiness when we learn to direct our inner drives, our interest, and our attention to something besides ourselves.”

“Many men now give but a minimum of their potential interest or activity to purposefulness. They seem to prefer to let life slip by with interest centered in trivial activities and unrewarding ways. The person who uses a portion of his leisure to the unselfish service of his fellowship finds in his purposefulness that he can influence and change existing circumstances for the better.”

“Climb out of your self and serve others.”

“We have a stewardship of influence and an obligation to assume an increasing responsibility for dynamic leadership at the national, state, and community levels.”

“The future is ours to go on helping build and helping protect the things we hold dear in our America. In so doing, we have discovered that the ultimate good for us — and for all others lies not in self-seeking but in selfless service to humankind.”

“Volunteer service is the gift we bring to Veterans Hospitals, local hospitals, nursing home programs, Red Cross activities, church activities, and community service programs.”

“Our people want to go on serving. They’re not through with life just because they’re off the payroll.”

“What I spent, is gone; what I kept, I lost; but what I gave away will be mine forever.”

“Remember, one person with faith and love for his fellow is equal to a force of ninety-nine with only selfish interests.”

“Dr. Paul D. Moody is quoted as saying, ‘The measure of a man is not in the number of his servants but in the number of people he serves.’ The oldster who loves his family, who shares, with his neighbor, of his time and of himself, who helps his community become a happier, healthier place because he is in it, is truly successful. For him, aging ceases to be a problem — he has become the answer to it.”

“Many men now give but a minimum of their potential interest or activity to purposefulness. They seem to prefer to let life slip by with interest centered in trivial activities and unrewarding ways. The person who uses a portion of his leisure to the unselfish service of his fellowship finds in his purposefulness that he can influence and change existing circumstances for the better.”

“Our most important years lie ahead of us. Giving and serving are the reason for living.”

“To serve, not to be served.” The motto of Dr. Andrus and AARP, taken from Mark, “Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.”

“The causes that can engage your leisure hours to the betterment of society are as numberless as the sands of the desert. Just what your choice is, only you can tell, and only you can do the job.”

“What our deepest self craves is not mere enjoyment, but some supreme purpose that will enlist all our powers and will give unity and direction to our life. We can never know the profoundest joy without a conviction that our life is significant—not a meaningless episode. The loftiest aim of human life is unselfish service to others.”

“Too often, we retired persons say, ‘I’m just one man, one woman.’ We should realize that as a retired man or woman, we still have a place in life — a place in which we can serve. We believe that every man and woman has a duty to help others. So often, someone says, ‘I don’t have time to help others.’ We do have the time. The world would be better off today if, whenever someone called for help, there would always be someone else to say, ‘I am here.’”

“Few joys are greater than the joy of participation with a dedicated group, and that is a boon we offer to all men. We are all recruits in the total human enterprise that is hoping to contribute to the ultimate good. So we enter into a community of service and hope. By so doing, we transcend our allotted span of life; we deny mortality. We live for that which passes beyond the here and now. We give to purposes that matter, that out-live one’s own life.”

“In our daily meeting with one another, we must realize that it is only in the sharing of one’s self with others that we renew ourselves. Only in the meeting of minds — thine and mine — do we meet and release the divine in each of us.”

“In our daily meeting with one another, we must realize that it is only in the sharing of one’s self with others that we renew ourselves. Only in the meeting of minds—thine and mine—do we meet and release the divine in each of us.”

“We seem to think “they” should do something about “them.” Is it not time for us to realize that there is no mythical “they” in this land where freedoms and rights exist and seemingly are forgotten—that “we” are the “they” whom so many talk about as being responsible and corrective?”

“The concept of the person as a social being is that society has no existence apart from that of its individual members. Our Association emphasizes for us this truth: first, that retirement is opportunity; and second, that man does not live by bread alone; that together we can work toward a many-splendored maturity; growing, not just growing old.”

“Remember, every morning, we have the gift of time — 24 hours — no more, no less — just as your neighbor has. What are we going to do with our gift? Why not make it creative? Let’s push aside the horizons of our interests and make for ourselves a lovelier, richer, and more challenging world. Truly, creativity is not an aptitude — it is an attitude.”

“A myth has grown around creativity, leaving the inference that only the talented possess it, that it is an attribute of genius. Creativity is the inherent, unceasing impulse in all of us to embody, outside of ourselves, something that the divine and the spiritual within us perceive as noteworthy. It is the power in which we must have faith — the creative and the curative power— that refreshes us in sleep and heals us when ill. It is upon this human factor — upon man’s stamina and resourcefulness, upon his daring that the growth of creativity depends, for creativity does not mean merely the adding of another skill to our operational or artistic equipment. Instead, it is the development in ourselves of a different confrontation both with the realities of life and the awe and wonder of it. It connotes a novel and a more satisfying involvement of ourselves with the life about us and the spiritual and intellectual life within us.”

“It has been widely said that whatever many may say about the future, it is ours – not only that it may happen to us, but it is in part made by us. To enjoy the present, to extract from it every jot of its flavor, its scent, and its quality, to have faith in man and in country, that’s the way to build the future. Today is ours — it will be significant to us as we make it purposeful.”

“If there is one important resolve that is both urgent and self-protective for us, it is to break with the past — for the past cannot be changed or cured. A man cannot go forward and stand still looking backward at the same time.”

“Young man, the tragedy of old age is inactivity. We hope to prevent that at our home. Never take to the rocking chair when you get on in years. If you do, you are a goner.”

“Whether some care to admit it or not, old people have a future. And they have an obligation to both their nation and their community.”

In assessing Ojai for her retirement community, according to Scott Hart: “She talked to everyone, probing into the town’s mood, the people’s attitudes, and she talked lengthily with the children.”

“Twelve years later, Grey Gables, administered by the nonprofit Bureau of Homes (a subsidiary of NRTA), has altered the image of aging into a desirable condition. Approximately 85 residents demonstrate the ‘most effective example of social integration we have seen,” said the French Magazine Le Troisieme Age.’”

“Might it not be well for us older folk now to develop interests and intellectual concern for the future so that we may improve our understanding of the world and prepare ourselves more fittingly to live in it?”

For residents of Grey Gables, according to Scott Hart: “A zest for living was demanded, and, even more so, an ability to live in harmony with others. The foremost imperative was the willingness to reach the dynamic maturity which Dr. Andrus exemplified.”

“Loneliness, boredom, the tendency to grow mentally and physically careless and indifferent, the terrifying sense of insecurity and possible physical or mental incompetence, the spiraling costs of nursing and medical care, the harrowing fear of lack of privacy and medical care, the harrowing fear of lack of privacy and independence—all the uncertainties of advancing life; these became the dragons we saw and resolved to slay.”

“Grey Gables is a club-like, self-sustaining, non-profit home for group living, one answer to the teacher’s problem of retirement housing, for it offers an adventure in spending one’s leisure years in one of California’s loveliest of sunny valleys, enjoying metropolitan living against a mountain setting. It is at once a quiet home for relaxation and a dynamic cultural center; it offers both and, in addition, luxury accommodations with gracious informal hospitality.”

“Some of the dragons we saw and resolved to slay were loneliness, boredom, and the terrible sense of insecurity. Grey Gables is more than a residence or clubhouse of retired folk. It symbolizes what can be accomplished by groups inspired by courage and vision. Grey Gables is a realization that retired folk need not wait to be served by their younger brethren but can build and administer their own future.”

“Grey Gables is the name of our NRTA residence and headquarters. It is an estate of five and one-quarter acres in the village of Ojai, an ideal place detached from the distractions of city life…the air is invigorating and dry…We of Grey Gables are certain that this project will be a pilot one, the first perhaps of many to prove to the world that retirement can be a dynamic adventure in gracious living.” – from NRTA Journal Dr. Andrus foresaw a nursing home where the elderly might receive 24-hour care in the highly-specialized field of geriatrics.

“The Acacias hopes to be more than a nursing facility, more than a convalescent home; it is a health center that will demonstrate the potency of helping older people discover the basis of their trouble and through care, friendly concern, and expert service find the right channels to recovery. The Acacias in its freshness and beauty of building and setting is in itself a strong factor in the attainment of this goal; its lines are restful; its colors refreshing; its furnishing modern and effective.”

“If we look upon our retirement from paid employment as also being our commencement, our graduation into a new unexplored world, our 65th year is no longer tragic, but, instead, is a time when we can plan our own individual time, schedules, and our own program of activities and can either develop or ignore our own potentials for growth and for service.”

“The social service agencies have programs of recreation, card playing, and so on…That’s not for us. We’re interested in growth and service, not just a kindergarten.”

“As it is, when you leave a job, they often just give you a gold watch, and all you can do is look at it and count the hours until you die. Yet think of all the grand things we can do that youth can't. Think of all the things we already have done! Someday, the retired citizens of this country will have the dignity they deserve.”

“Our generation of older folks is a pilot one. How it will be reported by posterity depends on us. We hope we will be judged on our rewarding and interesting lives and the importance, to ourselves and to society, of our value in personal growth and community participation. We hope we will be judged as having faced confidently an entirely new present and an unknown future, trying to continue in the full stream of life and emphasizing the truth, first, that retirement to us means opportunity; and, second, that man does not live by bread alone; that together we can work toward a many-splendored maturity; growing, not just growing old.”

“Happiness, we know, comes from within, but it is equally true that our greatest unhappiness comes also from within. When our inner happiness is self-centered, we lose it. When our inner-self seeks an “other’s” goal, we gain it. If the aim is centripetal, it defeats itself; when it is directional, it brings with it well-being.”

“Retired persons can find much to do and learn, and we like to do for ourselves instead of having others do for us.”

“As we retire, the most impelling problem facing us is ‘What of the future?’ This we know: that the past is forever gone, and the future is not yet. All we — and all mankind — have is the present — already passed as we think of it.”

“We must learn to live in retirement. We must learn how to let go of our old job, no matter how we loved it. That is behind us, and ours no more. We must recognize how much of life is still before us, how much it holds of real promise, and how truly we can and should continue to serve.”

“Each of us has powers of which we are unaware; each of us has a circle of influence. Our limitations are a product of our own thinking and self-evaluation. If only we think we can!”

“Let us keep our zest for living, for the joy we can find and the warm human friendships we can make — and mindful of our life as a trust — do what we can to make life useful.”

“You had an aim for your mature working years. It was to teach the young. They were rich and rewarding because you were actively engaged in reaching a goal. The same should be true of the retirement years. Reach for a definite, realistic accomplishment.”

[My mother] “was my inspiration to do something about being retired. She once told me, ‘you thought your work was done when you gave up youngsters, but it’s only the beginning because it’s now with older persons.’”

“If we retire from life, life retires from us.”

“We are not retired but refired!”

“Retirement is that time in life when a person has time to get down to work in earnest,” says Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus, who speaks from experience.

“Retirement should be intelligently anticipated — should be planned for, long before that period of life is reached. There should be a yearning for something to live for and to live by beyond the here and now, something more compelling and challenging than his own welfare and well-being. He should adopt the slogan, ‘Retirement is opportunity unlimited.’ He should be constantly aware that no one can live for himself alone. The gift of time, which retirement brings, offers him the chance to do as he would for others, to volunteer and to contribute, to be emotionally involved, to stimulate the sluggish and the inactive lonely—the rare opportunities of service, and the treasured side-benefits of retirement living. He hopes to show them a world where no one becomes old and sad, where no one becomes godly and grave, where no one becomes crafty and wise, where no one becomes bitter of tongue.”

“Happy is the man or woman who, on growing old, can quickly adjust to necessary changes and find satisfying substitutes; who looks upon retirement from a job, however devoutly served and treasured, as a challenging opportunity for a second career. Happier still will that fortunate person be if this second career expands his circle of friends, raises his sights to service for his fellows, challenges his powers, absorbs his interest, and makes the activities of each day a necessary part of the future he is helping to build for others as well as himself.”