FIRE-inspiring quotes

[Focus]

Chances are you've come across some quotes that resonate with you as an early retiree (or retiree to be). Thought it might be fun to collect some of these in a thread. I'll start:

“Most of us spend years in the workplace perfecting our strategic minds, and essentially living in the future. But engaging ourselves with vitality and gusto in the years after working full-time requires that we more fully occupy our bodies and hearts, which root us in the present moment — the only place where we can feel truly connected to our life experience.“
–Ed Merck

And then, of course, there's the one in my signature area below...

 

[David1961]

"I don't work for my money. My money works for me".

 

[ItDontMeanAThing]

After reading this quote I stopped thinking about ER in terms of 'when I...', and started writing down the what, where, when, how, and how much questions for which I needed answers if my ER would happen while it was still E:

“Spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings

 

[Jackson D]

Here are three of my favorites. They pretty much sum up the way I want to live the rest of my life:

"From this hour, freedom! From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute,
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me…”

Walt Whitman- from Song of the Open Road

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

Mark Twain

“It's time to start living the life you've imagined.”

Henry James

 

[razztazz]

There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important as living within your means. Calvin Coolidge

Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life -- Hippy dippy 60s aphorism

I knew I'd have to do something for a while in order to do nothing for a longer while --- Somebody here on this forum. It was too late to inspire me personally but I was hooked into the sentiment by age 10.

 

[REWahoo]

"Pants? We don't need no stinkin' pants!" - Unknown E-R.Org forum member

 

[Andre1969]

"Up-Chuck on all of it!" -Ruth Gordon, 1976, "The Big Bus"

 

[redduck]

"When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich."
---Jean-Jacques Rousseau

 

[MuirWannabe]

Get busy living or get busy dying.


Andy Dufraine

 

[daylatedollarshort]

In the United States, the economic problem that organizes many of our lives is not that we don’t have enough. It’s that we don’t have quite as much as those who have more. That’s an economic problem that, almost by definition, can never be solved. - Ezra Klein

The question Keynes set out to solve was how humanity would adapt to a world of abundance. “He saw two options,” explains Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. “One was that we could consume ever more goods. Or we could enjoy more leisure....By and large, we have chosen door number one. - Ezra Klein

With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy. - Lope De Vega

It is wealth to be content. - Lao-Tzu

 

[truenorth418]

Definition of work: People I don't like telling me to do things I'm not interested in.

(Paraphrasing Jacob Lund Fisker)


Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum

 

[FIREd]

"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." - Henry David Thoreau

 

[heyyou]

"My early retirement has been the best, most carefree years of my life."--Me


Sent from my tin can on a string

 

[BTravlin]

Whatever I want, whenever I want.

...Unknown

 

[Yellowjacket]

There is a reason they call it work.....it's not meant to be easy.

17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”

 

[scrabbler1]

"I don't work for my money. My money works for me".

LOL that's a lot like my signature line!


Another favorite line, from a Seinfeld episode ("The Junior Mint"):

GEORGE COSTANZA: "Hu-Yeah, interest. It's an amazing thing. You make money without doing anything..."

 

[Htown Harry]

"Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit"

- George Carlin

"Too many people spend money they earned..to buy things they don’t want..to impress people that they don’t like."

–Will Rogers

 

[Jerry1]

Everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth - Mike Tyson

No sure it relates to FIRE, but it's a great quote. Generally, I like the quotes that amount to saying "your money or your life". Very few people are blessed enough to love what they do so much as to have your money equal your life. I'm in the process of wrapping up my work life - OMY (or a little less).

 

[chas57006]

You don't want to be the richest person in the cemetery.

 

[ImReady]

What does a man need-really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in-and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all-in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages and preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where then lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?

Sterling Hayden, Wanderer

 

[Winemaker]

"Life is like a sh*t sandwich, the more bread you have the less sh*t you have to eat." Skip Drake, my first boss, circa 1973.

"The good life is expensive; there is another, but it isn't good."
Can't remember who and when.

 

[gcgang]

Man sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.

Dalai Lama


Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum

 

[friar1610]

What does a man need-really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in-and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all-in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages and preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where then lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?

Sterling Hayden, Wanderer

I wasn't sure who Sterling Hayden was, so I Googled him. Reading his bio, I recognized who he was from several of his movie roles. I also found a site with a few other of his quotes:
Sterling Hayden Quotes (Author of Wanderer)

Sounds like an interesting guy; I'm going to see if our library has his autobiography, The Wanderer.

 

[MichaelB]

Numbers is hard ...

 

[daylatedollarshort]

What does a man need-really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in-and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all-in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages and preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where then lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?

Sterling Hayden, Wanderer

Excellent choice. I had not read that one before.