Aging & Wisdom Quote by J.B. Priestley

Priestley’s complaint lands because it refuses the comfort of a golden age. Instead of shaking his fist at “kids these days,” he offers a bleakly funny accounting trick: every era has its preferred scapegoat, and he’s managed to be it twice. The line “I missed out coming and going” is doing the real work - a punchline shaped like a lament. It’s not just that respect is scarce; it’s that the social contract feels rigged to deny it at each life stage, turning the normal arc of aging into a double loss.

The intent is slyly accusatory. Priestley isn’t really documenting manners; he’s exposing how “respect” operates as a badge society grants selectively, often to protect power rather than honor experience or potential. Youth is treated as unserious until it’s useful as labor, trend, or cannon fodder. Old age is revered in speeches, then sidelined in practice - listened to ceremonially, ignored politically, warehoused economically. By framing both ends as disrespected, he punctures the idea that authority naturally accrues with time.

Context sharpens the bitterness. Priestley lived through two world wars, the rise of mass media, and the remaking of Britain’s class system and welfare state. Those upheavals minted new hierarchies fast, then discarded people just as fast. The subtext is exhaustion with a culture that treats human worth as time-sensitive: too young to matter, too old to count. His joke is a critique of modernity’s churn - and a warning that “respect” is often just another form of rationing.