People who don't cherish their elderly have forgotten whence they came and whither they go.

The remark frames care for older people as a moral and existential duty rather than mere social policy. To “cherish” the elderly is to acknowledge continuity across generations: one’s own origins (“whence they came”) lie in the labor, sacrifices, and cultural inheritance of those who preceded us, and one’s destination (“whither they go”) is the same human arc toward aging and death. The quote thus criticizes ageism as a kind of amnesia—forgetting both gratitude and self-recognition. It also implies that a society’s treatment of elders is a measure of its ethical maturity, because honoring the old is inseparable from honoring human dignity over the full lifespan.