[Ads-l] "The older I get, the better I was."

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Entertaining saying, JL. I found some other ways to phrase the quip,
but the excellent citation you found was still the earliest.

Date: May 29, 1964
Newspaper: Grayson County News
Newspaper Location: Leitchfield, Kentucky
Article: Books and Authors (Book Review of "The Oregon Desert" by E.
R. Jackman and R. A. Long)
Quote Page 2, Column 6
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
An amusing final chapter is titled "A Horseback and Alone." A few
examples of the cowboy's musings:
"The older I get, the better I used to be."
[End excerpt]

Date: August 9, 1966
Newspaper: Cumberland Evening Times
Newspaper Location: Cumberland, Maryland
Article: Mace Brown Made Famous HR Pitch
Author: Rudy Cernkovic
Quote Page 12, Column 4
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
Brown refused to compare the players of yesteryear with today's crop.
"I'm not one of those players who believe 'the older I am the better I
was'. The players are no bigger or stronger than they were in my day,"
he said.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 1:16 PM Jonathan Lighter
<00001aad181a2549-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> I encountered this self-deprecatory proverb long ago, maybe on a T shirt
> in the '90s.
>
> To judge from Google Books and  Internet Archive, that's about the time it
> had become relatively current.
>
> The oldest example - by far - seems to be from the Archive:
>
> 1958 Bruce F. Towne _Bricks on the Chimney: Facts and Foibles of Jamaica,
> Iowa_ ([Jamaica, Ia.:], pvtly. ptd.,  1958) unp.: Present day heroes seem
> unreplacable [sic] but next year always seems to find stalwarts and the
> show goes on. As Coach Neubauer so often quoted, "The older I get the
> better I was."
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org