Life & Wisdom Quote by Richard Armour

Armour’s line turns retirement from a social trophy into a comic trap: not freedom, but fatigue with a costume change. The pun on “retired” isn’t just wordplay; it’s a small act of sabotage against the American myth that work is suffering and its absence is bliss. He splits exhaustion into two species: the grinding tiredness produced by labor, and the more quietly corrosive tiredness produced by aimlessness. The joke lands because it’s structurally true: you can quit the job and still be stuck in the logic of the job, measuring your days by what you’re not doing.

The subtext is sharper than the quip suggests. “First tired of working” nods to the obvious: repetition, office politics, the slow leak of time. “Then tired of not” points at something many cultures refuse to admit out loud - that leisure without meaning curdles into its own kind of labor, a constant project of filling hours and defending your worth. Retirement promises relief; Armour implies it can also deliver a new anxiety: you’ve escaped the treadmill only to discover you miss the belt.

Context matters: Armour writes as a mid-century American humorist, in an era when retirement was becoming a mass institution - pensions, corporate careers, the very idea of a “golden years” script. His intent isn’t to sneer at retirees, but to puncture the sentimental ad copy. The wit does what good satire does: it makes the private discomfort legible, and it reminds you that “rest” isn’t a plan.