Old age ain't no place for sissies.

Bette Davis’s line “Old age ain’t no place for sissies” is widely circulated as a late-life quip reflecting her famously tough, unsentimental public persona. It is generally treated as an off-the-cuff remark from interviews and profiles in her later years, when she was coping with the physical and professional hardships of aging while remaining outspoken and combative in the press. The saying fits a broader tradition of Davis’s sharp one-liners about endurance, work, and the costs of a long life in the spotlight, and it is often quoted in discussions of aging as a demanding, sometimes painful process rather than a gentle decline.

The sentence compresses a bracing philosophy of endurance: aging is not a gentle phase but a test of resilience. “Ain’t no place” frames old age as an environment with hazards—illness, loss, diminished autonomy—where timidity and self-pity are liabilities. The deliberately colloquial “sissies” (now dated and problematic in its gendered insult) intensifies the tough-love tone, implying that survival requires grit, humor, and a willingness to face discomfort without illusion. In Davis’s mouth, the line also functions as self-characterization: it reinforces her persona as a fighter who meets hardship head-on, turning vulnerability into a kind of defiant wit.

“Getting old isn’t for sissies.”
“Old age is no place for sissies.”
“Growing old ain’t for sissies.”