Quote of the Day: Jane Elliot on Daily Inspiration

In the late 2010s and early 2020s, as social media intensified the cult of “peak years” and workplaces quietly swapped tenure for trendiness, age became a public metric, tracked, joked about, and punished in plain sight. That atmosphere still governs 2026, when algorithms, hiring screens, and even beauty filters reward the young and sideline everyone else. Against that backdrop, Jane Elliot’s blunt line lands like a diagnosis: “Age is how we determine how valuable you are.”

The sting of the quote is its accuracy. We pretend age is a neutral fact, but we use it like a price tag: too young to be taken seriously, too old to be considered “adaptable,” just right to be “leadership material.” Youth gets framed as promise, energy, freshness, marketability, while aging is treated as a deficit, even when it comes packaged with judgment, steadiness, and hard-won perspective. The result is a hierarchy where worth rises, crests, and then, by social decree, declines.

This isn’t only about hiring or Hollywood. Age-as-value leaks into healthcare decisions, who gets listened to in a family, who is assumed competent online, who is allowed to change their mind or start over. It narrows our definition of humanity into something conditional, and it drains resilience from people who most need it, those told, subtly or explicitly, that their best days have already expired.

Jane Elliot, an Emmy-winning actress best known as Tracy Quartermaine on General Hospital, has spent a career watching how industries reward “timeless” talent while marketing “timely” faces. Her longevity across daytime and primetime TV makes her a credible witness to the economics of age.

For this Saturday in late November, the practical challenge is simple: stop outsourcing value to a number. Ask, instead, what someone can build, repair, teach, or imagine, then act like those answers matter.