Aging & Wisdom Quote by Allen Tate

Authority used to do the heavy lifting: invoke church, tradition, canon, or “the best minds,” and the argument arrived pre-approved. Tate’s line is a dry admission that the old cheat code no longer works - and that he’s not pretending he lives outside the collapse. “But in our age” sets a historical scene with a faint sigh of resignation, as if the speaker is watching the furniture of civilization being hauled out. The pivot is crucial: “the appeal to authority is weak” reads like diagnosis, not celebration. Tate isn’t praising liberation from elders; he’s noting a thinning of legitimacy itself.

Then comes the sharper turn: “and I am of my age.” It’s a confession of complicity dressed as modesty. A poet who often defended order and tradition concedes that even he can’t fully speak with the voice of unbroken continuity. He’s stuck making arguments the modern way: through persuasion, aesthetics, temperament - the vulnerable, negotiable tools of a culture that no longer agrees on who gets to say “because I said so.”

The subtext is anxiety about what replaces authority when it fails. Not freedom exactly, but improvisation: politics becomes charisma, criticism becomes taste, morality becomes self-authorization. Tate’s brilliance is the line’s double posture: he mourns the weakness of authority while admitting he shares the era’s skepticism. It’s a conservative insight without the easy consolation of pretending the past can simply be reinstated by quoting it.