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Time & hindsight

What worries you about getting older?

61 answers answered between 1932 and 2026 one of 25 in The Q&A

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Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Science and medicine 2 Arts and letters 50 Politics and public life 5 Business and finance 1 Technology 1 Sport 1
Read by age Any age In their thirties 10 In their forties 8 In their fifties 14 In their sixties 12 Seventy and beyond 15
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Winston Churchill Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1940–1945 and 1951–1955; Member of Parliament 1900–1964
One by one the more vigorous sports and exacting games fall away. Exceptional exertions are purchased only by a more pronounced and more prolonged fatigue. Muscles may relax, and feet and hands slow down; the nerve of youth and manhood may become less trusty. But painting is a friend who makes no undue demands, excites to no exhausting pursuits, keeps faithful pace even with feeble steps, and holds her canvas as a screen between us and the envious eyes of Time or the surly advance of Decrepitude. Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely.
Recorded Essay first published in the Strand Magazine in 1921–22 and collected in Amid These Storms, 1932, Winston S. Churchill, Painting as a Pastime, Project Gutenberg Canada, 1932 source ↗
Mario Molina Atmospheric chemist; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1995
Certainly not. As a young child, I remember just dreaming about the Nobel Prize, but that was just a dream. It’s not something I would have ever thought was possible for me.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interviewer, Academy of Achievement interview, 1996, 1996 source ↗
Lucy Lawless
I don’t want to get into an early death spiral, when you’re scaling down your life unnecessarily because you’ve already been there or done that. I never want to stop adventuring.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 30 August 2025 source ↗

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