Aging & Wisdom Quote by Elliott Gould

Youth, in Elliott Gould's telling, is both a personality flaw and an irreplaceable power source. The first clause is a jab from someone who's watched the young swagger through rooms as if time were a personal assistant: "arrogant or conceited" isn't moral condemnation so much as a diagnosis of what it feels like to inhabit a body that hasn't been billed yet. Youth can afford certainty because it hasn't collected evidence to the contrary.

Then Gould pivots and undercuts his own scolding. For all its insufferable self-assurance, youth is still the one asset you can't really fake. The line about "machinery" is doing double duty. On the surface, it's a wry nod to the industry he's lived in: cameras, lighting, editing, cosmetic tech, and now algorithmic smoothing can manufacture the look of vitality. Hollywood is basically a factory for making time seem negotiable. But he's also pointing at the broader cultural workaround: when youth disappears, modern life offers prosthetics for it - productivity systems, gym tech, skincare regimes, even the curated "young" persona online.

The subtext is a bitter compliment. We mock youth for being unbearable, but we build entire economies trying to simulate its effects: speed, novelty, sexual magnetism, risk tolerance. Gould's phrasing lands because it refuses comfort. It suggests aging isn't just loss; it's the moment you realize the only thing that can "replace" youth is a machine - meaning something external, performative, and ultimately uncanny.