The Last Generation Quotes

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

I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation. ~ Knut Hamsun

Among the current discussions, the impact of new and sophisticated methods in the study of the past occupies an important place. The new 'scientific' or 'cliometric' history-born of the marriage contracted between historical problems and advanced statistical analysis, with economic theory as bridesmaid and the computer as best man-has made tremendous advances in the last generation. ~ Robert Fogel

I believe I belong to the last literary generation, the last generation, that is, for whom books are a religion. ~ Erica Jong

F. Scott Fitzgerald is the first of the last generation. ~ Gertrude Stein

It is a quirk of American culture that each generation of nonconservatives sees the right-wingers of its own generation as the scary ones, then chooses to remember the right-wingers of the last generation as sort of cuddly. ~ Rick Perlstein

We are acting as if we were the last generation on the planet. Without a radical change in heart, in mind, in vision, the earth will end up like Venus, charred and dead. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

In the newspaper business, I was in the last generation before the arrival of the personnel manager. You were hired by editors - and editors who would take a chance on what they perceived to be talent and not hire a resume. ~ Pete Hamill

I have a 15-year-old boy, and we are about to give him car keys, which seems like an act of insanity when you know what you know about 15-year-old boy behavior. But in 2018, we'll have self-driving cars, and it will be so much better. My son may be the last generation of kids who learns to drive. ~ Nick Hanauer

Every generation welcomes the pirates from the last. ~ Lawrence Lessig

We were to have enough Christianity to fight the Communists and save the Republic, as long as we didn't take it all too seriously. We weren't there to carry a cross; we were there to earn a badge. We weren't to be about Christ and kingdom, just God and country. This notion of Christian America stood in the backdrop of the culture wars of the last generation. ~ Russell D. Moore

We're the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.' ~ Jay Inslee

What has happened in the last generation is that Tijuana has become a new Third World capital - much to the chagrin of Mexico City, which is more and more aware of how little it controls Tijuana politically and culturally. In addition to whorehouses and discos, Tijuana now has Korean factories and Japanese industrialists and Central American refugees, and a new Mexican bourgeoisie that takes its lessons from cable television. ~ Richard Rodriguez

The Aussies have spent so much time basking in the glory of the last generation that they have forgotten to plan for this one. It's just like the West Indies again; once their great names from the 1970s and 80s retired, the whole thing fell apart.

The way things are going, the next Ashes series cannot come too quickly for England. What a shame that we have to wait until 2013 to play this lot again. ~ Geoffrey Boycott

Taking bold climate action now has the potential to unleash the full power of business and at the same time lift millions of people out of poverty. We're the first generation to recognize this and the last generation that will have this opportunity. ~ Richard Branson

As I ran a few blades of grass between my fingers, enjoying the breeze as it caressed my face, I contemplated the cycle of life. As this year would host the long anticipated arrival of the Mayan Doomsday, marking the end of their long count calendar, I wasn't alone in my ponderings. The whole world was focused on the potential that we would be the last generation; the witnesses of the world's end. ~ J.M. Northup

I feel like we were the last generation, and there's this big divide before and after the 1990s. I feel sorry for the kids today. It's all too much. ~ Chloe Sevigny

Darren had always wanted to believe that theirs was the last generation to have to live that way, that change might trickle down from the White House. When in fact the opposite had proved to be true. In the wake of Obama, America had told on itself. ~ Attica Locke

So why don't we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required - we could party our way into extinction! ~ Peter Singer

The single greatest influence in our lives was the church. The Catholic Church in the 1960s differs from what it is today, especially in the Naugatuck Valley, in those days an overwhelmingly conservative Catholic place.
I was part of what might have been the last generation of American Catholic children who completely and unquestioningly accepted the supernatural as real. Miracles happened. Virgin birth and transubstantiation made perfect sense. Mere humans did in fact, become saints. There was a Holy Ghost. Guardian angels walked beside us and our patron saints really did put in a good word for us every now and then. ~ John William Tuohy

We are the last generation with a real opportunity to save the world. ~ Laurence Overmire

I grew up in kind of the last generation of Canadians who thought things that were happening in Britain were more important, almost, than what was happening in Canada. And my mother was fervently of that opinion. ~ Robert MacNeil

I begin to feel like I was in the last generation of Americans who took a civics class. ~ Roger Ebert

Fundamentally, I started writing to save my life. Yes, my own life first. I see the same impulse in my students-the dark, the queer, the mixed-blood, the violated-turning to the written page with a relentless passion, a drive to avenge their own silence, invisibility, and erasure as living, innately expressive human beings. ~ Cherrie L Moraga

Since middle-class Western women can best be weakened psychologically now that we are stronger materially, the beauty myth, as it has resurfaced in the last generation, has had to draw on more technological sophistication and reactionary fervor than ever before. The modern arsenal of the myth is a dissemination of millions of images of the current ideal; although this barrage is generally seen as a collective sexual fantasy, there is in fact little that is sexual about it. It is summoned out of political fear on the part of male-dominated institutions threatened by women's freedom, and it exploits female guilt and apprehension about our own liberation
latent fears that we might be going too far. ~ Naomi Wolf

Mr. Orage, one of the most active and intelligent reformers for the last generation in England, attempted this very thing. He, in his little intellectual review which was supported by so brilliant a group of writers for so many years, published week after week the ingredients of the English patent medicines and the cost of those ingredients. Not a single one of the newspapers followed suit, or dared publish so much as the fact that Orage was thus acting courageously in his own limited sphere for the public good. ~ Hilaire Belloc

In the last generation, with public Christianity in headlong retreat, we have caught our first, distant view of a de-Christianized world , and it is not encouraging. ~ Paul Johnson

In the last generation, this country produced one of the most eminent men of science in the whole world. His name was quite unknown among us while he lived, and it is still unknown. Yet I may say without too great exaggeration that when I heard it mentioned in a professional assembly in the Netherlands two years ago, everybody got down under the table and touched their foreheads to the floor. His name was Josiah Willard Gibbs. ~ Albert Jay Nock

Five o'clock tea" is a phrase our "rude forefathers," even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completelyis it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for "all the ills that flesh is heir to," the glorious Magna Charta. ~ Lewis Carroll

The capitalist system has lifted mankind out of mass poverty. It is this system that in the last century, in the last generation, even in the last decade, has acceleratively been changing the face of the world, and has provided the masses of mankind with amenities that even kings did not possess or imagine a few generations ago. ~ Henry Hazlitt

A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation. ~ Max Gluckman

Light bulbs. Electricity. It seems likely that ours will be the last generation to ever gaze, wide-eyed, at something truly novel. That our kind will be the last to ever stare in disbelief at a man-made thing that could not possibly exist. We made wonders, boys. I only wonder how many of them are left to make. ~ Graham Moore

And most of all, it means continually drawing connections among these seemingly disparate struggles - asserting, for instance, that the logic that would cut pensions, food stamps, and health care before increasing taxes on the rich is the same logic that would blast the bedrock of the earth to get the last vapors of gas and the last drops of oil before making the shift to renewable energy. ~ Naomi Klein

That is when the crowd really lifted me. That last 600 meters I was not running with my own legs. It was incredible. ~ Ashton Eaton

At last reluctantly Gandalf himself took a hand. Picking up a faggot he held it aloft for a moment, and then with a word of command, naur an edraith ammen! he thrust the end of his staff into the midst of it. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us, - of the definite with the indefinite - of the substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails, - we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies - it disappears - we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late! ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Our capacity for production and enjoyment is ?a function, in the last analysis, of our character, our integrity. ~ Stephen Covey

I am very obsessed with ballet now because it is a very difficult sport and a beautiful one because it is not about money. It's not like playing football or tennis - dance has no sponsors, it's just for the beauty. Maybe it is the only last pure sport. ~ Carine Roitfeld

Hey guys!" Hey Boom. "Oooh, is this the introduction?" Yes. Now clear off. You're in the spotlight. "Oh come on! I wanna be in the story too." "Clear off Boom! Leave this part to the famous people." "Famous? Are you kidding? There is no one more famous than the mighty Dr. Boom!" Dude, it's been what, four books since we last saw you? Our first readers have probably died from old age by now. "LET ME HAVE THE SPOTLIGHT!" NEVER! ON WITH THE STORY! "NOOOOOOOOOOO! ~ Minecrafters

If you're anything like me,
You bite your nails,
And laugh when you're nervous.
You promise people the world,
because that's what they want from you.
You like giving them what they want...
But darling, you need to stop,

If you're anything like me,
You knock on wood every time you make plans.
You cross your fingers, hold your breath,
Wish on lucky numbers and eyelashes
Your superstitions were the lone survivors of the shipwreck.
Rest In Peace, to your naive bravado...
If life gets too good now,
Darling, it scares you.

If you're anything like me,
You never wanted to lock your door,
Your secret garden gate or your diary drawer
Didn't want to face the you you don't know anymore
For fear she was much better before...
But Darling, now you have to.

If you're anything like me,
There's a justice system in your head
For names you'll never speak again,
And you make your ruthless rulings.
Each new enemy turns to steel
They become the bars that confine you,
In your own little golden prison cell...
But Darling, there is where you meet yourself.

If you're anything like me
You've grown to hate your pride
To love your thighs
And no amount of friends at 25
Will fill the empty seats
At the lunch tables of your past
The teams that picked you last...
But Darling, you keep trying.

If yo ~ Taylor Swift

Sometimes I do. Sometimes I look at him ... and I remember how it was when I kissed him and felt that love. It makes me want that back. I want to feel it again. I want to return to it. Other times though ... other times, I'm so scared. I listen to these guys ... and to Jerome ... and then the doubts gnaw at me. I can't get them out of my head. We've been sleeping together, you know. Literally. It hasn't been a problem so far, but sometimes I lie awake watching him, thinking this can't last. The longer it does ... I feel like ... like I'm standing on a high wire, with Seth at one end and me at the other. We're trying to reach each other, but one misstep, one breeze, one side-glance, and I'll fall over the edge. And keep falling and falling."
Carter leaned toward me and brushed the hair away from the side of my face. "Don't look down then," he whispered. ~ Richelle Mead

You will learn, deekra. You never marry just a person. You always marry a family.
They walk in total silence. But this silence is screaming, screeching, and filled with sounds
the thudding of Bhima's heart; the clawing, tearing fear that is choking Maya's throat; ... Inside this silence the two women walk, afraid of touching its contours, because to break the dam of silence would mean to allow the waters of anger, rage, fury to come rushing, would allow the tidal wave of the recent past
the past that they have ignored, aborted, killed
to come roaring in to destroy their tenuous present. But quiet, like love, doesn't last forever. ~ Thrity Umrigar

In the last few years, race relations in America have entered upon a period of intensified craziness wherein fear of being called a racist has so thoroughly overwhelmed fear of being a racist that we are in danger of losing sight of the distinction. ~ Florence King

The ownership of slaves became for many immigrants the single most important symbol of their success in the New World, although few of them ever participated in the economy of the large plantation. The small slaveholding culture of the colonial frontier had been largely responsible for the initial expansion of the antebellum South, and that culture persisted. The comments of travelers are confirmed by the census returns and tax records: these people only infrequently became large planters. Furthermore, their ethnicity survived until the last decades of the antebellum ~ James Oakes

It didn't even occur to me that I'm the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music. ~ David Byrne

So this is what you two do when you're up here," Dean drawls. "All that deep, intensive tutoring." He air-quotes the last word, chuckling in delight.
"Actually, Garrett's just helping me brush up on my make-out skills," I tell Dean in the most casual voice I can muster.
Dean snickers. "'That so?"
"Okay…" Dean's eyes gleam. "Then I'm calling your bluff, baby doll. Show me your moves."
I blink in surprise. "What?"
"If a doctor told you you've got ten days to live, you'd go for a second opinion, wouldn't you? Well, if you're worried about being a crappy kisser, you can't just take G's word for it. You need a second opinion." His brows lift in challenge. "Let me see what you've got."
"Stop being a jackass," Garrett mutters.
"No, he has a point," I answer awkwardly, and my brain screams, What?
He has a point? Apparently Garrett's body-melting kisses have turned me into a crazy person. ~ Elle Kennedy

Dearly beloved," Father Bruce began, "we are gathered here to witness the union of Nick and Harper as they pledge their love an devotion to each other for what we hope is the last time, because I don't know about you people, but I don't think any of us should have to go through this again. ~ Kristan Higgins

The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips. ~ Charles Dickens

The Advent season is a season of waiting, but our whole life is an Advent season, that is, a season of waiting for the last Advent, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

From the look of us, you'd never know we slept in the same bed last night and made out like the world was going to end if we stopped. ~ Simone Elkeles

She looked down at the letter she had clutched in her hand. It could wait until tomorrow.
Silently she turned and went to get something soothing to drink. Or, at the very least, some hard ale. She needed something to help her sleep because the last image she'd witnessed before turning away from the chamber would have her awake and obsessing for hours. The image of Annwyl the Bloody, known terror of the Dark Plains, lovingly running her hand down Fearghus's snout ... and Fearghus the Destroyer letting her. ~ G.A. Aiken

No, sweets. She understands how I feel about you, even if you don't just yet. I know that last night we were playing a little game with the word like, but I don't just like you, Grace. I'm falling in love with you. I am, I can't help it. I'm falling in love with you and I need you to just stop blocking me and keep an open mind. ~ J.A. Huss

The cold bowl felt good. She'd been huddled up and crying for so long she was almost feverish. Paige took a spoonful, turned it into her mouth with the metal spoon against its roof so her tongue could capture every single drop of rich chocolate as it melted away. Good flavors and good feelings followed. She closed her eyes. Ah, comfort food. It really did its job. Paige spooned up another bite, slow and deliberate, making it last. ~ Lynette Endicott

It is the human condition to ask questions like Anne's last night and to receive no plain answers," he said. "Perhaps this is because we can't understand the answers, because we are incapable of knowing God's ways and God's thoughts. We are, after all, only very clever tailless primates, doing the best we can, but limited. Perhaps we must all own up to being agnostic, unable to know the unknowable. ~ Mary Doria Russell

I put so much pressure on myself to raise the bar with each and every project. I treat it like every film is my last, and I make sure I pour everything I have into every film I make because if I'm not trying to improve, someone else will. ~ Scott Adkins

Sometimes I catch myself trying to remember the last time I had meaningful physical contact with another person, just a hug or a heartfelt squeeze of my hand, and my heart twitches. ~ Paula Hawkins

Whenever he had spoken of love, she had spoken of love's brief duration. 'A year, or even two months from now, you won't love me anymore.' Josée was the only person he knew who had a real consciousness of time. Everyone else, including himself, was driven by some very fundamental instinct to try, or pretend, to believe that love could last and solitude be dispelled forever. ~ Francoise Sagan

The movies have been so rank the last couple of years that when I see people lining up to buy tickets I sometimes think that the movies aren't drawing an audience - they're inheriting an audience. People just want to go to a movie. They're stung repeatedly, yet their desire for a good movie - for any movie - is so strong that all over the country they keep lining up. ~ Pauline Kael

Many people forget that magick is all about change, and the greatest change is the inner, not the outer, landscape. Outer magickal changes - such as immediately getting a new job, lover, or physical healing - seem more impressive at first, but the inner changes last longer. They are the most impressive. Anyone can learn to do some basic spells and have good results, but the practitioners who develop a solid spiritual and magickal practice become more centered, calm, healthy, and truly confident over time are the magicians who impress me. ~ Christopher Penczak

Rule number one: wear loose clothing.

No Problem.

Rule number two: no alcohol for the next three days.

Slight problem. I'll miss my evening glass of wine but figure I can go for three days without and compensate later.

And the last rule: absolutely no coffee or tea or caffeine of any kind.

Big problem. This rule hits me like a sucker punch and sure would have knocked me to the floor had I not been sitting there already. I'm eying the exits, plotting my escape. I knew enlightenment came at a price, but i had no idea the price was this steep. A sense of real panic sets in. How am I going to survive for the next seventy-two hours without a single cup of coffee? ~ Eric Weiner

I did another commercial. Don't lose your loved ones, I wrote, because of excessive radioactivity. Don't be a wallflower at the dance because of strontium 90 in your bones. Don't be a victim of fallout. When the tart on Thirty-sixth Street gives you the big eye does your body stride off in one direction and your imagination in another? Does your mind follow her up the stairs and taste her wares in revolting detail while your flesh goes off to Brooks Brothers or the foreign exchange desk of the Chase Manhattan Bank? Haven't you noticed the size of the ferns, the lushness of the grass, the bitterness of the string beans, and the brilliant makings on the new breeds of butterflies? You have been inhaling lethal atomic waste for the last twenty-five years and only Elixircol can save you. ~ John Cheever

At the last Celebration I spoke before an auditorium full of people and I could just feel the affection and the positive feelings that they were exuding. It was actually moving. I remember thinking, 'I'm not worthy,' because 'Star Wars' is so much bigger than all of us. ~ Mark Hamill

It was widely accepted within the ranks of those fighting in the east that death on the battlefield was preferable to an unknown destiny in a Soviet prisoner of war camp. This mentality often played a role in the many acts of bravery demonstrated by individuals or entire units. During the closing days of the war it was not at all uncommon for entire companies, battalions, and battle groups to fight to the last man, the survivors going into captivity only when ammunition was exhausted and wounds were too grave to allow further resistance. ~ Gottlob Herbert Bidermann

there was no sign of him anywhere. Their last encounter had left her wanting more of him, all of him. Her heart was bursting for him. The last time he'd just up and disappeared she'd at least seen him in the press; but this time she found nothing. Sure that Tara was still on the prowl for him and not knowing her whereabouts made her rather nervous. She'd even asked Kaley what she might know about him, but she said that Tyson and she never talked about Daniel, that it was'not that sort of relationship ~ Amy Chanel

Buying a self-help book is usually the second-to-last step to surrendering to a crisis of self, the last step being therapy and the first step being a gym membership, or at least a Zumba DVD or a pamphlet on the Learning Annex. ~ Michael I. Bennett

We'll meet again in the evening," said Gupta.
"Anything else I should know before you leave?"
Gupta grinned. "Amar is terrible at flattery."
I smiled, but I couldn't help but wonder who had been the last person he had attempted to flatter. The thought bothered me.
"I was never wooed by courtly speech anyway."
As Gupta closed the door behind him I heard a soft laugh by my side.
"Is that so?"
Amar.
I turned to face him, my gaze tracing the emerald robes that matched my sari perfectly. Like yesterday, he wore a hood that left only the lower half of his face in view. I looked at him, and even if it was only a moment, he eclipsed the staggering pull of the tapestry. ~ Roshani Chokshi

As I moved deeper into the room, his gaze dropped to my feet, and worked its way back to my face. I was wearing faded jeans, boots, and a snug pink Juicy T-shirt I got on sale at TJ Maxx last summer that said I'm a Juicy girl.
"I bet you are," he murmured. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Behold, I have reached the peak of the mountain and my spirit has taken flight in the heavens of freedom and liberation. I have gone far, far away, O children of my mother; the hills beyond the mists are now hidden from my view, the last traces of the valleys have been flooded by the ocean of serenity, and the paths and trails have been erased by the hand of oblivion. The roar of ocean waves has faded. I no longer hear anything but the anthem of eternity, which harmonizes with the spirit. ~ Khalil Gibran

The last time I was in Chile, I was hypnotized by a friend who is studying to be a curandero, a healer, who led me back through several incarnations. It wasn't easy to return to the present, however, since my friend hadn't reached that part of the course, but the experiment was well worth the effort because I discovered that in former lives I was not Genghis Khan, as my mother believes. ~ Isabel Allende

Two libriomancers had been disciplined for trying to get an early copy of the last Harry Potter book. ~ Jim C. Hines

Because love is the most dangerous weapon in the world. It's more unstable than uranium. ~ Rick Yancey

She laughed. 'It won't last. Nothing lasts. But I'm happy now.'

'Happy,' I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception--especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I think I was just trying to coast and you can't coast and try and win at the same time, you know? It'll be three years now since those wins, but the last couple of years I've just really been trying to put my miles in, get them up there to 80 miles a week, 90 miles a week and put the work in again. ~ Carrie Tollefson