Generation Quotes

I think it's harder for each generation. Even I just feel completely separate from teenagers today who have access to the Internet. And I'm amazed that this interest in video games has never gone away. It just keeps growing. ~ Adrian Tomine

I could not hold my breath for seven minutes. I couldn't even make it to one. I once tried to run a mile in seven minutes after hearing some athletes could do it in four but failed spectacularly when a side stitch crippled me about halfway in.
However, there was one thing I managed to do in seven minutes that most would say is quite impressive: I became queen.
By seven tiny minutes I beat my brother, Ahren, into the world, so the throne that ought to have been his was mine. Had I been born a generation earlier, it wouldn't have mattered. Ahren was the male, so Ahren would have been the heir.
Alas, Mom and Dad couldn't stand to watch their firstborn be stripped of a title by an unfortunate but rather lovely set of breasts. So they changed the law, and the people rejoiced, and I was trained day by day to become the next ruler of Illéa. ~ Kiera Cass

The prayers of God's saints strengthen the unborn generation against the desolating waves of sin and evil. ~ Edward McKendree Bounds

The whole slacker generation totally didn't apply to us musically. ~ Dave Grohl

Passed down from generation to generation, storytelling was an art in my family. ~ David Mixner

PICARD: Did you read that book I gave you? (Wesley reacts, barely concealing a grimace as he recalls.)
WESLEY: Some of it.
PICARD: That's reassuring.
WESLEY: I just don't have much time.
PICARD: (re the book in his hand) There is no greater challenge than the study of philosophy. (Wesley glances over at Picard's book)
WESLEY: William James sure won't be on my Starfleet exams.
PICARD: The important things never will be. Anyone can be trained to deal with technology, and the mechanics of piloting a starship.
WESLEY: But Starfleet Academy--
PICARD: It takes more than just that. Open your mind to the past... to history, art, philosophy. And then... (re: the stars) ...this will mean something.
(Wesley considers this, almost embarrassed as he realizes Picard does truly care about him.)
Then: PICARD (continuing) Just consider James' wisdom: "Philosophy... is not a technical matter... it is our sense of what life honestly means... our individual way of feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos."
(then) That's what I want for you.

From:
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION
"Samaritan Snare" #40272-143
Written by Robert L. McCullough ~ Jean-Luc Picard

Numerous are the academic chairs, but rare are wise and noble teachers. Numerous and large are the lecture halls, but far from numerous the young people who genuinely thirst for truth and justice. Numerous are the wares that nature produces by the dozen, but her choice products are few.
We all know that, so why complain? Was it not always thus and will it not always thus remain? Certainly, and one must take what nature gives as one finds it. But there is also such a thing as a spirit of the times, an attitude of mind characteristic of a particular generation, which is passed on from individual to individual and gives its distinctive mark to a society. Each of us has to his little bit toward transforming this spirit of the times. ~ Albert Einstein

We're currently living with a generation of established novelists who are embarrassingly out of date with respect to social networking, internet skills, and so on. ~ Charles Stross

I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

We tend to see math and science as a steady state of facts rather than as the accumulated knowledge of linear traditions. As Korzybski put it, we see further because we "stand on the shoulders"5 of the previous generation. The danger of such a position is that we can forget to put our own feet on the ground. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

three conclusions: (1) at least weak forms of superintelligence are achievable by means of biotechnological enhancements; (2) the feasibility of cognitively enhanced humans adds to the plausibility that advanced forms of machine intelligence are feasible - because even if we were fundamentally unable to create machine intelligence (which there is no reason to suppose), machine intelligence might still be within reach of cognitively enhanced humans; and (3) when we consider scenarios stretching significantly into the second half of this century and beyond, we must take into account the probable emergence of a generation of genetically enhanced populations - voters, inventors, scientists - with the magnitude of enhancement escalating rapidly over subsequent decades. ~ Nick Bostrom

Didn't anyone stop to reflect that the so-called old people of today used to smoke pot, for heaven's sake, and wear bandannas tied around their heads and picket the White House? When Amanda chided her for saying that something was "cool" ("I hate it when the older generation tries to copy the younger," she had said), did she not realize that "cool" had been used in Abby's time, too, not to mention long before? ~ Anne Tyler

No other generation but ours can evangelize the present generation. ~ John Mott

Many of the time-honored [parenting] techniques that have been passed down from generation to generation are, quite simply, bad advice masquerading as wisdom. ~ Susan Forward

The American government has been harvesting the Middle Eastern grapes of wrath for a generation and not making a secret of it, either. As lousy as the mass media may be, there was enough news about what was transpiring, year after year, to get the gist of what was happening ... No American can truthfully say that they could not find out what was going on ... ~ Nicholas Von Hoffman

The younger generation forms a country of its own. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I don't know why but I love this kind of project, when it's a little difficult and when you have a history. The beginning of the story of viticulture was in the Middle East, and it was a different generation than the science and logistics of today. My passion is to go into the past to make wine. Wine is something cultural, not only something to drink. I always try to find the identity of the place. ~ Stephane Derenoncourt

If you take all the money we've spent at NASA since we landed on the moon and you had applied that money for incentives to the private sector, we would today probably have a permanent station on the moon, three or four permanent stations in space, a new generation of lift vehicles. ~ Newt Gingrich

Walking to the net, I'm certain that I've lost to the better man, the Everest of the next generation. I pity the young players who will have to contend with him. I feel for the man who is fated to play Agassi to his Sampras. Though I don't mention Pete by name, I have him uppermost in my mind when I tell reporters: It's real simple. Most people have weaknesses. Federer has none. ~ Andre Agassi

Genius is the very eye of intellect and the wing of thought; it is always in advance of its time, and is the pioneer for the generation which it precedes. ~ William Gilmore Simms

I think Serena Williams is the best tennis player of this generation, if not the best ever. It is amazing for her to be playing as well as she is at the age of 31. ~ Samantha Stosur

I've had a very lucky life because I'm of this generation where everything was possible. ~ Deborah Moggach

The younger generation gives me more respect than I could ever hope for. ~ Daryl Hall

The transmission of knoledge from generation to generation is one of the miracles of civilization. ~ Nicholas A. Basbanes

The character of a generation is moulded by personal character. ~ Brooke Westcott

In actual fact, however, the revolt of Ibsen and Shaw against the conventional nineteenth century drama could very well be described as a return to Shakespeare, as an attempt once again to present human beings in their historical and social setting and not, as playwrights since the Restoration had done, either as wholly private or as embodiments of the social manners of a tiny class. Shakespeare's plays, it is true, are not, in the Shavian sense, "dramas of thought," that is to say, not one of his characters is an intellectual: it is true, as Shaw says, that, when stripped of their wonderful diction, the philosophical and moral views expressed by his characters are commonplaces, but the number of people in any generation or society whose thoughts are not commonplace is very small indeed. On the other hand, there is hardly one of his plays which does not provide unending food for thought, if one cares to think about it. ~ W. H. Auden

It's that zombie virus thing that was on the news!" shouted a man in a Starfleet uniform. It was Next Generation command red, but he was running away from the danger, not toward it. Maybe that was how the command crew stayed alive. "They'll eat you if you stay here!" "They ~ Mira Grant

To be told that you're the voice of your generation is such an incredible amount of pressure, and I haven't faced that. Maybe by the time our third record rolls around, I will. My goals are to be a band like that in five years. At the moment, though, I can't really relate in any sense to the scale that Kurt Cobain fame has reached. ~ Zachary Cole Smith

There will be no greater burden on our generation than to organize the forces of liberty in our time in order to make our quest ofa new freedom for America. ~ Woodrow Wilson

Invisibility
there are things we can't see now, that are there, that are embedded, that it really takes time in order to be able to see. There are many ghosts that are lurking around and lingering through us that takes the technology of another generation or so in order to uncover and show what those stains and strains and perceived flaws really we're building towards ~ Lynn Hershman Leeson

Your existence is evidence that this generation needs something that your life contains ~ Myles Munroe

There is the expectation that a younger generation has the opportunity to redeem the crimes and failings of their elders and would have the strength and idealism to do so. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

To assume the gospel in one generation is to lose it in the next. ~ D. A. Carson

The young now approached love in the way they approached success and consumption and the future itself: with an underlying assumption of abundance. They expected more out of love than earlier generations did and were willing to fight to secure it, but when it failed they were equally at ease in walking away. It was one strike and you're out. They rejected the moral vocabulary of an older generation: patience, tolerance, adjustment. ~ Anand Giridharadas

Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked generation after generation; give them 3000 calories a day and a few amenities, a little time off, and a strong jolt of fear, and you could work them at almost anything. Give them some ameliorative drugs and you had a working class, reified and coglike. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

the right to self-preservation could become egotism, and the power of generation could become license, ~ Fulton J. Sheen

I am sick of war. Every woman of my generation is sick of war. Fifty years of war. Wars rumored, wars beginning, wars fought, wars ending, wars paid for, wars endured. ~ Josephine Winslow Johnson

A man may be made in one generation, but a lady never! ~ Kate Langley Bosher

Now, I will be the first to admit that human life was not worth much to my generation in the Iron Age, but Flidais and her kind are forever rooted in Bronze Age morality, which goes something like this: If it pleases me, then it is good and I want more; If it displeases me, then it must be destroyed as soon as possible, but preferably in a way that enhances my reputation so that I can achieve immortality in the songs of bards. ~ Kevin Hearne

I came to see soldiers as men willing to lay down their lives for the sake of others. They fight for themselves and the generation under immediate attack, but certainly they fight for the futures of free peoples. Decades beyond World War II, I am one who benefited. That I can vote in presidential elections and not bend my knee to Hirohito's grandson is testament to the enduring work of the veterans of World War II. That I can write books for a living instead of sweating in a Third Reich factory is a product of Allied triumph. ~ Marcus Brotherton

'Eternal inflation,' as it's called - the endless generation of new universes - may be a hyper-cosmic imperative. It seems that it must happen. ~ Seth Shostak

I think of my father growing up in South Jersey, the son of second-generation German immigrant glassblowers. The opportunities for him of feeling that aspiration, that yearning, get out of the small town, connect to a larger world, get yourself to New York, wanting to play the piano at every opportunity, bonding with people who were on a similar path, ending up in Provincetown, which was kind of nexus for nonconformity, and artistic dropout reality. ~ Anne Waldman

I suggest that we need a generation or two not of theory but of an attempt to discover the real phenomena of eros. ~ Allan Bloom

There's a generation of children who don't like black and white movies. There's a level of impatience or intolerance now. ~ Peter Jackson

All of us together were of a generation born of old country people who spoke English with an accent and prayed in another language, who drank red wine and cooked their food in the old country way, and peeled apples and pears after dinner. ~ Robert Laxalt

You know what pisses me off about time? It only lets us experience it once, yet it lasts forever. ~ Dean Blake

Chase, we don't believe that homosexuality is a sin. The Bible was inspired by God, but it was written, translated, and interpreted by imperfect people just like us. This means that the passing of this sacred scripture from generation to generation and from culture to culture has been a bit like the "telephone game" you play at school. After thousands of years, it's impossible to judge the original spirit of some scripture. We believe that when in doubt, mercy triumphs judgment. So your parents are Christians who study and pray and then carefully choose what we follow in the Bible, based on whether or not it matches our understanding of Jesus's overall message. ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

Azariel didn't know what to say. Most Frenchmen preferred voluptuous women - whose ample breasts proved how well the next generation would be nurtured, between whose thighs they would take their pleasure. Women, in turn, dressed to appear as plump and fruitful as possible. Some even wore neckbands that, when pulled tight, made their chins look doubled. What kind of man wouldn't want a full-figured wife? ~ Maggie Anton

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer. ~ Joss Whedon

A neat little apartment with a neat little bourgeois life. A neat little security on the edge of the abyss. Do you really see that? ~ Erich Maria Remarque

Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music. ~ Toots Thielemans

The man who did the shooting was a civilian, Peter Kakhovsky, a gifted intellectual of extreme purity of motive in whom the conviction of the necessity of regicide burned with a gem-like flame. Determined to kill, expecting to die, this brilliant and terrible apparition, his slender form bundled up in a sheepskin coat, his delicate features surmounted by a shabby top hat, shot to kill with that indiscriminate ruthlessness which was later to characterise a whole generation of revolutionary terrorists. If he could not yet murder the Tsar, he would do the next best thing. ~ Edward Crankshaw

I come from way north. We'd listen to radio shows all the time. I think I was the last generation, or pretty close to the last one, that grew up without TV. ~ Bob Dylan

Extinction, the irrevocable loss of a species, causes pain that can never find relief. It is an ache that will pass from generation to generation for the rest of human history. ~ Callum Roberts

It's interesting to get older and realize that part of your job growing up in this profession is to help the next generation. More and more, with Boyhood and with Ellar Coltrane and with Emma [Watson], I start to see that role. There's no better way. Nobody wants advice, so you can't really give it. You just have to try to wish them well on their journey. ~ Ethan Hawke

This wired generation is kind of cool. ~ LeVar Burton

Entrepreneurship is the engine fuelling innovation, employment generation and economic growth. Only by creating an environment where entrepreneur- ship can prosper and where entrepreneurs can try new ideas and empower others can we ensure that many of the world's issues will not go unaddressed. ~ Klaus Schwab

Every pulse of your heartbeat is one liquid moment that flows through the veins of your being. Like a river of life flowing on since creation, approaching the sea with each new generation. ~ Don McLean

The reproduction of mankind is a great marvel and mystery. Had God consulted me in the matter, I should have advised him to continue the generation of the species by fashioning them out of clay. ~ Martin Luther

My dad, as a guy, had to quit school in the ninth grade, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. And spent his life pushing wheel barrels of heavy wet cement. So we've gone from pushing cement to now in one generation pushing legislation. But we always want any president to succeed, to do well; that means America does well and Americans do well. ~ John Barrasso

Good God enlighten us! Which of these two belongs to the sterner sex - the man who sits in Whitehall all his life on a comfortable salary, or the woman who has to keep her teeth bared lest she has her meatless bone of 17s. 4d. a week snatched away from her and who has to produce the next generation on her off-days? ~ Rebecca West

A generation before, it had been sagebrush and coyotes; a generation later, it was a burgeoning movie town. But for that brief idyllic time in 1910, Hollywood looked like the perfect place for a successful writer to settle down, build his dream house, and maybe do some gardening. ~ Kage Baker

My generation remembered going to the movies as an event. We would see these things, we would bring them home, and we would think about them for years because it would take a long time before they would go on television where you could re-experience the fun that you had when you watched them. ~ Joe Dante

Peace is a process - a way of solving problems. ~ John F. Kennedy

What I like to say is that we're trying to develop a new generation of technologies that are worthy of the next generation of kids. ~ Mitchel Resnick

My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

I know of no system other than Hinduism under which a class has been set apart from generation to generation for the exclusive pursuit of divine knowledge and consigned to voluntary poverty. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

C-sections and epidurals should be blessings to women, but I suddenly wondered if they had become a means from which to steal the magic of the power of birth away from a generation of mothers. ~ P.C. Cast

What I tell these young people is, the world is not as dangerous as the older generation would like you to believe. Anyone I know who has ever taken a risk and lost a job has ended up getting a better one two years later. ~ Jonathan Kozol

It avails not, time nor place
distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many
generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the
bright flow, I was refresh'd,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift
current, I stood yet was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the
thick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look'd. ~ Walt Whitman

There is a whole generation of women and it was as if their lives came to a stop when they had children. Most of them got pretty neurotic - because, I think, of the contrast between what they were taught at school they were capable of being and what actually happened to them. ~ Doris Lessing

To be the best next-generation leader you can be, you must enlist the help of others. Self-evaluation is helpful, but evaluation from someone else is essential. You need a leadership coach. Coaching enables a leader to go further faster. ~ Andy Stanley

There is a lot of sixties-bashing going on these days that I don't agree with at all. I feel that extremely important ideals were brought to the forefront of the collective consciousness at that time. Granted, drug use was so pervasive that our generation did not as a group have the capacity to manifest our ideals to any great extent. But many of the people who were young in the sixties and who were most touched by that collective ethos are still touched. ~ Marianne Williamson

Historians of a generation ago were often shocked by the violence with which scientists rejected the history of their own subject as irrelevant; they could not understand how the members of any academic profession could fail to be intrigued by the study of their own cultural heritage. What these historians did not grasp was that scientists will welcome the history of science only when it has been demonstrated that this discipline can add to our understanding of science itself and thus help to produce, in some sense, better scientists. ~ I. Bernard Cohen

The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the point of view of the subjugated is finally and inexorably being expressed. ~ James A. Baldwin

The awkward truth, according to one study, is that 90 percent of 8-to-16-year-ol ds have viewed pornography online. Considering the standard climax to even the most vanilla hard-core scene today, that means there is an entire generation of young people who think sex ends with a money shot to the face. ~ Gail Dines

I grew up believing my generation would be better. We would be kinder, we would be more level-headed. We would be more loving. And so many people are missing. ~ Jorja Fox

'Harry Potter' created a generation of readers in an era when kids could have disappeared into the depths of the Internet. That's no small feat. Every book series owes J.K. Rowling a debt of gratitude. ~ Gary Ross

... I'm afraid of what the digital age will do to the world, to the things we think are important ... it's almost like people want to believe in some illusion that they're robots and forget altogether that they're real, living people ... but everything these days is disposable, even people themselves, and that's why I'm afraid for the world," Mandy confessed, looking depressed and worried.
"So am I ... but I'll still watch all of it as the world dooms itself, because I want to see how it ends, and whether or not they'll be intelligent enough to forget all of this digital illusion afterwards," Alecto explained. "I'm sure that they'll be able to realize how wrong it all is ... even though the idiots outnumber most people these days, there are still enough intelligent people to fight against it. ~ Rebecca McNutt

That's the problem of today's generation. You want all the things quickly. You all hate to struggle. You see the life into two extremes, either success or failure, either rich or broke, either victory or defeat. You see the life in all black and white, but there are various shades of gray in-between two extremes of black and white and life happens to be there. ~ HBR Patel

The few surviving Armenians no longer ask to go home. They do not ask for restitution. They ask simply to have the memory of their obliteration acknowledged. It is a moral obsession, the lonely legacy passed onto the third and fourth generation who no longer speak Armenian but who carry within them the seeds of resentment that will not be quashed. ~ Chris Hedges

The contemporary historian never writes such a true history as the historian of a later generation. ~ Agatha Christie

I feel like as a generation, we sell ourselves short. I just expected more from us. ~ Kelly Clarkson

I say nice things about Mariah all the time. I tell Mariah all the time how much of a fan I am of her. She's one of my favorite artists of all time ... She's shaped a generation of singers. ~ Nicki Minaj

To the American people I bid a fond farewell. Guard your liberties. It is the trust of each generation to pass a free republic to the next. And if I know you right, you will rouse yourself from slumber to ensure exactly that. ~ Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

I'm sick and tired of our generation being called the TV generation. What do you expect? We watched Lee Harvey Oswald get his brains blown out all over. How could we change the channel after that? ~ Denis Leary

Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, ... We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history or the world - or make it the last. ~ John F. Kennedy

Whatever, Sam.
Whatever! Sam laughed, a booming guffaw. I love this word. It is my favorite from your generation.Decker smiled, unable to keep a straight face when Sam looked so awkward laughing. ~ Lizzy Ford

So many people of my generation all grew up with that shock theater package on television of 'Frankenstein,' 'Wolfman,' 'Dracula,' 'Mummy,' all the Universal stuff. ~ Rick Baker

With its Medicaid expansion, Obamacare may turn out to be the most equality-promoting policy enacted in a generation. ~ Timothy Noah

I do not wish to escape to myself, I wish to escape from myself. I wish to obliterate my consciousness and my knowledge of independent existence, my guilts, my secretiveness. ~ Allen Ginsberg

Each new generation, he thought, fails to learn from the one before. ~ Noel Hynd

I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it - and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. ~ Robert Greene

Scandinavian crime fiction has become a great success all across the world and rightfully so. Sjowall and Wahloo ushered in a whole generation of Swedish crime writers, many of whom are now available in English. ~ Camilla Lackberg

I learned a very valuable lesson. The hood will sell crack to your mother, watch your little sisters all grown up and try to fuck them, kill your little brothers, send our men to jail, steal our dreams, steal our families, fuck up friendships and do the same to the next generation behind us. And what we fail to realize is no matter how much we love the hood, that bitch will never love us back! ~ S. Yvonne

We attend a postmodern meeting, and everyone leaves happy because everyone at the meeting was able to express himself or herself, even if no decisions were made. We give equal awards to our kids so nobody feels left out. Our news media is more concerned with the question, "How did that make you feel?" than any other. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

You talk here about greatness. I just wanted to ask if you could understand what it was we were going for. That there is greatness in the attempt - something in the trying. That in trying, we set up a certain scaffolding that a new generation can use to climb to heights we only dreamed of. ~ Liza Palmer

Perhaps this is because I'm from the generation that grew up watching 'The Jetsons' on TV, but I really thought we would be much more advanced in the areas of transportation and medicine. ~ Pat Cadigan

We are raising today's children in sterile, risk-averse and highly structured environments. In so doing, we are failing to cultivate artists, pioneers and entrepreneurs, and instead cultivating a generation of children who can follow the rules in organized sports games, sit for hours in front of screens and mark bubbles on standardized tests. ~ Darell Hammond

I'm not gay, but I don't think you have to be gay to have a gay hero. Growing up, Alan Turing was certainly mine. I'm also not the greatest mathematician of my generation. We have lots of biographical differences, but nonetheless, I always identified with him so much. ~ Graham Moore