These retirement quotes will inspire you. Retirement is the withdrawal from one’s position or occupation or from one’s active working life. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours or workload.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging retirement quotes, retirement sayings, and retirement proverbs.
Best Retirement Quotes
- “Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them.” ~ Louis Armstrong
- “I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.” ~ Charles Lamb
- “As a chapter closes in your life,
And a new one starts for you,
May your years be filled with all the things
You’ve been looking forward to!” ~ John Walter Bratton -
“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
- “Retirement is like a long vacation in Las Vegas. The goal is to enjoy it to the fullest, but not so fully that you run out of money.” ~ Jonathan Clements
- “Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.” ~ Walt Whitman
- “Retirement is the last opportunity for individuals to reinvent themselves, let go of the past, and find peace and happiness within.” ~ Ernie J Zelinski
-
“Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.” ~ A. A. Milne
- “Retirement: a time to become much more than you have ever been.” ~ Ernie J Zelinski
- “Retirement kills more people than hard work ever did.” ~ Malcolm Forbes , Retirement quotes for work
- “You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.” ~ George Burns
-
“Middle age is when work is a lot less fun and fun is a lot more work.” ~ Laurence J. Peter
- “I keep going because if you stop, you stop. Why retire? Inspire.” ~ Mickey Rooney
- “Don’t act your age in retirement. Act like the inner young person you have always been.” ~ John Anthony West
- “As in all successful ventures, the foundation of a good retirement is planning.” ~ Earl Nightingale
-
“Don’t simply retire from something; have something to retire to.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Retirement is the ugliest word in the language.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
- “The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.” ~ Abe Lemons
- “Retirement can and will be a glorious time in your life. You’ll love the freedom and ability to try new things. It’s a new phase of life; a chance to be a beginner again.” ~ Richard Carlson
-
“The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” ~ Vince Lombardi
- “Something pretty… that’s just the surface. People worry so much about aging, but you look younger if you don’t worry about it.” ~ Jeanne Moreau
- “It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.” ~ Barack Obama
- “Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.” ~ Abigail Adams
-
“Retirement: a brand new beginning! How wonderful!” ~ M.I.A.
- “I believe that the biggest mistake that most people make when it comes to their retirement is they do not plan for it. They take the same route as Alice in the story from “Alice in Wonderland,” in which the cat tells Alice that surely she will get somewhere as long as she walks long enough. It may not be exactly where you wanted to get to, but you certainly get somewhere.” ~ Marc Singer
- “When a man retires and time is no longer a matter of urgent importance, his colleagues generally present him with a watch.” ~ R. C. Sherriff
- “Age is only a number, a cipher for the records. A man can’t retire his experience. He must use it. Experience achieves more with less energy and time.” ~ Bernard Baruch
-
“Few men of action have been able to make a graceful exit at the appropriate time.” ~ Malcolm Muggeridge
- “A lone maple leaf resting on sand Have you ever been out for a late autumn walk in the closing part of the afternoon, and suddenly looked up to realize that the leaves have practically all gone? And the sun has set and the day gone before you knew it, and with that a cold wind blows across the landscape? That’s retirement.” ~ Stephen Leacock
- “As to that leisure evening of life, I must say that I do not want it. I can conceive of no contentment of which toil is not to be the immediate parent.” ~ Anthony Trollope
- “Sooner or later I’m going to die, but I’m not going to retire.” ~ Margaret Mead
-
“I am a free man. I feel as light as a feather.” ~ Javier Perez de Cuellar
- “I’m going to wake up tomorrow and start with not caring how I feel. That’s going to feel great.” ~ Andre Agassi
- “Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.” ~ Simone de Beauvoir
- “Golf is played by twenty million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun.” ~ Jim Bishop
-
“Thoughts on the Merits of Work The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work.” ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton
- “Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.” ~ Charles Kuralt , Retirement quotes for teachers
- “Preparation for old age should begin not later than one’s teens. A life which is empty of purpose until 65 will not suddenly become filled on retirement.” ~ Dwight L. Moody
- “There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people.” ~ Muhammad Ali
-
“When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking.” ~ Gail Sheehy
- “I’m very pleased to be here. Let’s face it, at my age I’m very pleased to be anywhere.” ~ George Burns
- “I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel business. The day you die.” ~ Yasunari Kawabata
- “Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.” ~ George Burns
-
“But I’m really enjoying my retirement. I get to sleep in every day. I do crossword puzzles and eat cake.” ~ Derek Landy
- “Two weeks is about the ideal length of time to retire.” ~ Alex Comfort
- “When I retire I’m going to spend my evenings by the fireplace going through those boxes. There are things in there that ought to be burned.” ~ Richard M. Nixon
- “Don’t you stay at home of evenings? Don’t you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
-
“Lord Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don’t choose to have it known.” ~ Lord Chesterfield
- “Men and women approaching retirement age should be recycled for public service work, and their companies should foot the bill. We can no longer afford to scrap-pile people.” ~ Maggie Kuhn
- “I really stay busy [in retirement]. I often have to cancel my golf games on the weekends to go play in tennis tournaments.” ~ Richard Davies
- “Every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome.” ~ George Washington
-
“At retirement, switching from “I must” to “I want” leaves me puzzled and uneasy.” ~ Mason Cooley
- “You can’t put off being young until you retire.” ~ Philip Larkin
- “When some fellers decide to retire nobody knows the difference.” ~ Kin Hubbard
- “Retirement requires the invention of a new hedonism, not a return to the hedonism of youth” ~ Mason Cooley
-
“People who refuse to rest honorably on their laurels when they reach retirement age seem very admirable to me.” ~ Helen Hayes
- “I will not retire while I’ve still got my legs and my make-up box.” ~ Bette Davis
- “After you’re older, two things are possibly more important than any others: health and money.” ~ Helen Gurley Brown
- “Sanders was a friend of chickens.” ~ Charles Taylor Manatt
-
“The Republican Party is a friend of Social Security the way Colonel Sanders was a friend of chickens.” ~ Charles Taylor Manatt
- “I didn’t know that painters and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.” ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- “The role of a retired person is no longer to possess one.” ~ Simone de Beauvoir
-
“For retirement brings repose, and repose allows a kindly judgment of all things.” ~ John Sharp Williams
- “The company accountant is shy and retiring. He’s shy a quarter of a million dollars. That’s why he’s retiring.” ~ Milton Berle
- “Great stories teach you something. That’s one reason I haven’t slipped into some sort of retirement: I always feel like I’m learning something new.” ~ Clint Eastwood
