Retirement quotes
803 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside retirement — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Work almost always has a double aspect: it is a bondage, a wearisome drudgery; but it is also a source of interest, a steadying element, a factor that helps to integrate the worker with society. Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap."
"Your retirement identity is of a successful person who creatively and efficiently manages your money and lifestyle to adapt to the ever changing economic and personal conditions of our time."
"What I hear people talking about are things that anybody of any color or any religion or any sexual orientation can get with. They cannot earn a decent living if they`re working class folks. They`re worried about retirement if they`re in their 40s and 50s. They`re worried about sending their kids to college. If we focus on what really matters, we can get there."
"Americans used to be able to depend on their jobs to provide a stable retirement."
"One of the difficulties in getting to the bottom of the poor prospects for retirement is that the policy and intellectual elites, including corporate leadership, who are dealing with this problem, rarely have the same difficulties as the great majority of middle-income Americans."
"There is no question that policy makers, corporate leaders, pension consultants, and journalists too have to get out into the real world to at least see the pain of retirement woes before they start to prescribe policies and solutions."
"In Western Europe, most countries have variations of the lifetime pension system for most workers so they are keeping the system that we are walking away from. By comparison, 50% of the American workforce is not offered any retirement plan by their employers. And of those who are offered a plan, roughly 25% do not choose to join. In other words, everything is voluntary, and that's one of the reasons our results are so perilous for most people."
"The main problems are insufficient diversification and the failure to pick age-appropriate strategies - that is, more aggressive when you're younger, and more conservative when you approach retirement. But even then you have to invest for growth."
"The retirement financial crisis will affect far more people than baby boomers, and certainly it will affect their children. Most of the retirees and near-retirees with whom we talked, said that they were extremely reluctant to have to depend on their children financially, or to think of moving in with their children. But the mere fact that they were discussing those issues indicates that some of them have already figured out that that is what lies ahead for them."
"One of the strongest lessons I learned in doing six months of work on retirement topic was how absolutely crucial the Social Security system is for the great mass of Americans. The research of professionals and our own reporting convinced me that many millions of people are not capable of effectively managing the finances for their own retirement."
"Social Security is the foundation stone of that kind of retirement security. It not only needs to be strengthened in order to make sure it's there for younger baby boomers and Generations X and Y, but it probably needs to be strengthened and expanded because the retirement benefits now being offered by most employers are not sufficient to support middle-income Americans in their long years of retirement."
"The issue of the pension gap has got to become visible and important to millions of people before Washington will respond seriously. Right now, everyone thinks it's his or her own problem and that individuals have to do better and save more. Of course, that is true. We all have to save more and take responsibility for our own retirement. But we have a huge social and economic problem on our hands."
"It's probably also smart to keep some money in cash to invest it. But I would resist at all costs taking a lump-sum distribution because the tendency is to spend out too fast in the early years of your retirement. The advice of professionals is to take out no more than 5% per year and that will give you 20 years of distributions, and at your age, 55, you probably have more than 20 years life expectancy."
"On issues carrying as much emotional freight as race - and there aren't many - a U.S. senator needs to speak with care and consistency. Otherwise, he could find people speaking at his own retirement tribute."
"We have a rare and perhaps small window of opportunity to set partisan differences aside, and attempt to achieve what many in recent years have felt was unreachable - greater retirement security for ourselves and our children."
"There's no retirement, there's just a few years of non-work by the fire with someone bringing you some tea and relative peace and playing with the grandchildren."
"Retirement in another country is your body is too racked with pain and your hands are too arthritic from the life in the rice patty fields, so you can't work anymore."
"For myself, I can't understand a life without a job. I don't know what I would do without employment. Retirement is out of the question for me."
"What will I do with myself when I retire? When I quit my job, I do not want to quit living. Can I possibly be of use when retirement day comes, or will I just be taking up space?"
"Mr. Jefferson has reason to reflect upon himself. How he will get rid of his remorse in his retirement, I know not. He must know that he leaves the government infinitely worse than he found it, and that from his own error or ignorance."
