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Retirement Quotes

Retirement does not have a Wikiquote page, so this one borrows from three that do: work, time and age. The result suits a card or a send-off speech better than a close reading. There are lines about labour well done, about the years running on, and about being old that are rueful more often than sentimental.

As elsewhere on the site, each quote links to its own page with the source and the editors’ notes. If you want to put a name under a line in a card, check for a flag first.

Random quote on Retirement

Most quoted on retirement:

The precarization of academic labor contributes to the demolition of radical leftism.

Gabriel Rockhill The CIA reads French Theory: On the Intellectual Labor of Dismantling the Cultural Left (2017)

I want to live in a world where we’re not trying to disenfranchise humans or devalue labor.

Timnit Gebru

Let me correct an impression. Sheikh is part of my name. Neither is it a title nor a name given for my old age.

Ahmed Lemu

Women appeared to contribute more labor to the development

Simi Afonja

He who creates value works, and is a worker. A movement that wants to free labor is a workers’ party.

Joseph Goebbels Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.

Thomas Jefferson

The true Indian sets no price upon either his property or his labor. His generosity is limited only by his strength and ability.

Charles Eastman The Essential Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa): Light on the Indian World (2007)

The state of Wyoming and the governor's office do not and will not take sides in a labor dispute, because I don't believe that's the role of government.

Mike Sullivan

Each country has its own values and robots should comply with the values of the country they are in, kind of like labor laws.

Laurence Devillers

Man proposes and old age disposes—

Isaac Asimov I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994)

The Renaissance was a time of mercenary soldiers, ours is a time of mercenary labor.

Eric Hoffer Before the Sabbath (1979)

[One of my friends] was in labor for 36 hours. (I don't even want to do anything that feels good for 36 hours.)

Rita Rudner Naked Beneath My Clothes (1992)

Carol Burnett put it best when she described labor pains. She said, "Take your bottom lip, and pull it over your head."

Bill Cosby Himself (1983)

Labor is marching toward the goal of industrial democracy and contributing constructively toward a more rational arrangement of our domestic economy.

John L. Lewis Labor and the Nation speech (1937)

Whoever is misinterpreting my remarks must be more interested in my opponent than in organized labor.

Anita Lee Blair

Learning without thought is labor lost.

Confucius

19) Think before you make the coward's choice. Old age is not for sissies.

Larry Niven

Old age is second childhood.

Aristophanes Clouds (-423)

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.

Thomas Jefferson

Workers have kept faith in American institutions. Most of the conflicts which have occurred have been when labor's right to live has been challenged and denied.

John L. Lewis Labor and the Nation speech (1937)

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