Quote of the Day: Andy Rooney on Aging & Wisdom

If you’ve ever suspected that our “principled” choices are sometimes just polished explanations for convenience, then this one-liner from Andy Rooney will feel like a pinprick to the ego: “Vegetarian - that's an old Indian word meaning lousy hunter.” It lands as a joke, but it lingers as a small audit of how we narrate ourselves.

Rooney’s punchline works because it compresses centuries of human eating into a single, mischievous reversal. In a world where food was earned, tracked, trapped, or gathered, diet was often less ideology than circumstance. By pretending vegetarianism is merely the label given to someone who couldn’t bring down dinner, he deflates the modern habit of turning every preference into a manifesto. The laugh arrives, and then a question follows: how much of what we call conviction is simply a story we tell after the fact?

There’s also a sharper edge: the line toys with cultural attribution to expose how casually we borrow identities to decorate a point. Rooney isn’t offering anthropology; he’s demonstrating how stereotypes travel faster than facts, especially when packaged as humor. The editorial takeaway isn’t to sneer at vegetarians, but to notice how easily we reduce complex motives, ethics, health, environment, into something simpler, meaner, and more entertaining.

Andy Rooney earned his authority the old-fashioned way: by watching people closely, first as a war correspondent and later as 60 Minutes’ plainspoken essayist. His gift was making everyday talk reveal public truths.

No need for a special anniversary to make this usable. Today, try applying the joke as a tool of humanity: before you judge someone’s choices, or your own, ask what’s principle, what’s pressure, and what’s just the story that makes lunch sound like destiny.