Our Generation quotes
-
Our generation is wonderful generation, full of wonder. It's very hard to find an example of it in all our history. Composed of contradictions — light and darkness mixed.
-- Abraham Isaac Kook -
People complain that our generation has no philosophers. They are wrong. They now sit in another faculty. Their names are Max Planck and Albert Einstein. Upon appointment as the first president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, Berlin, formed for the advancement of science.
-- Adolf von Harnack -
Looking back 25 years later, what I may say is that the facts have been far better than the dreams. In the long course of cell life on this earth it remained, for our age for our generation, to receive the full ownership of our inheritance.
-- Albert Claude -
It is interesting seeing young people these days and watching how unimportant music is in their lives compared with our generation.
-- Alison Moyet -
-
Undefined Christianity is not a problem in our generation. It is defined Christianity that brings the rub.
-- Alistair Begg -
Now, the vicissitudes that afflict the individual have their source in society. It is this situation that has given currency to the phrase social forces. Personal relations have given way to impersonal ones. The Great Society has arrived and the task of our generation is to bring it under control. The study of how it is to be done is the function of politics.
-- Aneurin Bevan -
We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.
-- Annie Dillard -
Education is the civil rights issue of our generation.
-- Arne Duncan -
-
Making systems work is the great task of my generation of physicians and scientists. But I would go further and say that making systems work - whether in healthcare, education, climate change, making a pathway out of poverty - is the great task of our generation as a whole.
-- Atul Gawande -
This is the moral challenge of our generation. Not only are the eyes of the world upon us. More important, succeeding generations depend on us. We cannot rob our children of their future.
-- Ban Ki-moon -
To break our addiction to oil is one of the greatest challenges that our generation will have to master.
-- Barack Obama -
Chicago '68 was a relatively small demonstration for its time, but I've talked to millions of people who claim they were there because it felt like we were all there. Everyone from our generation was there and was at Woodstock.
-- Bill Ayers -
-
Those who criticize our generation forget who raised it.
-- Bill Cosby -
It has been left to our generation to discover that you can move heaven and earth to save five minutes and then not have the faintest idea what to do with them when you have saved them.
-- C. E. M. Joad -
What our generation failed to learn was the nobility of work. An honest day's labor. The worthiness of the man in the white socks who would pull out a picture of his grandkids from his wallet. For us, the factory would never do. And turning away from our birthright - our grandfather in the white socks - is the thing that ruined us.
-- Charlie LeDuff -
Going out in Paris was like going out in the '30s dressed like the Andrews Sisters. It was everything I'd seen in books at my grandparents' house, only it was our generation.
-- Christian Lacroix -
-
You know, the condom is the glass slipper of our generation. You slip it on when you meet a stranger. You dance all night, then you throw it away.
-- Chuck Palahniuk -
Despite everything that Harlem did to our generation, I think it gave something to a few. It gave them a strength that couldn't be obtained anywhere else.
-- Claude Brown -
I feel like our generation is just so obsessed with the idea of perfection and we don't need to be.
-- Connor Franta -
Our generation does not want its epitaph to read, 'We kept charity overhead low.' We want it to read that we changed the world.
-- Dan Pallotta -
-
Not every believer has the missionary gift, but every Christian is called to some kind of involvement in missions. We are called to advance the gospel in some way and to participate in the fulfilling of God's purposes in our generation
-- David Shibley -
The current generation of world leaders -- our generation -- is also being called to face significant challenges concerning peace, collective security and the environment. We have been unable to solve old disputes and to prevent new threats. The use of force is incapable of eliminating the underlying causes of conflict.
-- Dilma Rousseff -
He doesn't translate well into our generation.
-- Donald Sutherland -
One hundred years ago, visionary political leaders from the Progressive Era established a system of national forests and parks in our country that are the envy of the world and today are the treasure of an entire nation. Why not a similar, global vision for our generation?
-- Eban Goodstein -
-
This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century - solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.
-- Elie Wiesel -
I had heard so much negative talk about our generation, that we're slackers and young fogies, that I knew wasn't true of the people I know.
-- Eric Liu -
I noticed in the late 1990s that my friends and I were already nostalgic for the 1980s, and by the turn of the century, VH1's 'I Love the '80s' gave all of us an accelerated nostalgia for our generation.
-- Ernest Cline -
I have come to the conclusion that none of us in our generation feels as guilty about sin as we should or as our forefathers did.
-- Francis Schaeffer -
-
What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek -
I believe without any doubt that you are the finest generation this Church has ever had.
-- Gordon B. Hinckley -
You, our youth of today, are among the most illustrious spirits to be born into mortality in any age of the world. Yours is a noble heritage and a wonderful opportunity.
-- Harold B. Lee -
But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example.
-- Henry Louis Gates -
-
Our generation, unfortunately, is stuck to our phones - and, like, Twitter - constantly, which I have no problem with. I'd say we're not describing the children of America or anything like that, but there is something to take from it: It is kind of sad how we can't go thirty minutes without checking our phone.
-- Israel Broussard -
In today's world, the elites are growing even more comfortable with one another across national lines, yet at the same time, less comfortable with low-income people who share their nationality. How we create those bonds of community that are truly global as well as national is one of our generation's great challenges.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
We should be most careful about retreating from the specific challenge of our age. We should be reluctant to turn our back upon the frontier of this epoch... We cannot be indifferent to space, because the grand slow march of our intelligence has brought us, in our generation, to a point from which we can explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be to deny our history, our capabilities.
-- James A. Michener -
German militarism and Nazism have devastated twice in our generation the lands of German neighbors.
-- James F. Byrnes -
-
It has always seemed to me a pity that the young people of our generation should grow up with such scant knowledge of Greek and Latin literature, its wealth and variety, its freshness and its imperishable quality.
-- James Loeb -
When I started Rolling Stone in November 1967, the magazine's initial chapter was to cover rock & roll music with intelligence and respect. Even then, we knew that the fervor sweeping our generation encompassed more than just music.
-- Jann Wenner -
Let the future say of our generation that we sent forth mighty currents of hope and that we worked together to heal the world.
-- Jeffrey Sachs -
Our challenge, our generation's unique challenge, is learning to live peacefully and sustainably in an extraordinarily crowded world. Our planet is crowded to an unprecendented degree. It is bursting at the seams. It's bursting at the seams in human terms, in economic terms, and in ecological terms
-- Jeffrey Sachs -
-
I've always loved hip-hop, since I was a kid, that's the music that I loved. I think everyone of our generation kind of fantasized about hip-hop in some ways.
-- Joaquin Phoenix -
It is our task in our time and in our generation, to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours.
-- John F. Kennedy -
The critical question for our generation—and for every generation— is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there?
-- John Piper -
I am in no doubt that if you use the term 'luv' in a letter or text message then you are incapable of truly understanding the emotion. Artists have not pored over heartache and unrequited sentimentality for years so that our generation could decide that four letters is simply one too many to express how we feel.
-- Jon Richardson -
-
Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension; when he does not torment himself with childish guilt feelings, but avoids tragic adult sins; when he postpones immediate pleasures for the sake of long-term values.... Our generation must be inspired to search for that maturity which will manifest itself in the qualities of tenacity, dependability, co-operativeness and the inner drive to work and sacrifice for a nobler future of mankind.
-- Joshua L. Liebman -
We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti -
One way or another, the choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come
-- Lester R. Brown -
The challenge is either to build an economy that is sustainable or to stay with our unsustainable economy until it declines. It is not a goal that can be compromised. One way or another, the choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.
-- Lester R. Brown -
-
History balances the frustration of 'how far we have to go' with the satisfaction of 'how far we have come.' It teaches us tolerance for the human shortcomings and imperfections which are not uniquely of our generation, but of all time.
-- Lewis F. Powell, Jr. -
Of all the poetry written in our generation, Frost's is most likely to stand the test of time
-- Lewis Gannett -
Our generation grew up with the Review as a fact of life. It was America’s literary magazine. To our minds, it still is. It has launched our favorite writers. It has made a special claim for the quarterly as such, being both timely and lasting, free of the news of the day or the pressure to please a crowd. Most of all, the Review has shown, repeatedly, that works of imagination can be as stylish and urgent as the flashiest feature reporting, and can do more to refocus our picture of the world.
-- Lorin Stein -
Have you stopped seeing great things happen in your life? Perhaps you have stopped believing that God can work in a mighty way even in our generation.
-- Luis Palau -
-
Give young people a chance, our generation may just surprise you.
-- Marc Kielburger -
Chick Lit uses humor to reflect life back to us. It's a very comforting genre, and it's the first time our generation has had a voice. It's a very important genre for all of those reasons.
-- Marian Keyes -
If I cannot offer some relief to our world, if I cannot inspire our generation to join me, then I feel I am a complete waste of space. This constant fear of feeling irrelevant in our society has been the catalyst behind all my efforts and passions for as long as I can remember.
-- Masiela Lusha -
Comfort is the god of our generation, so suffering is seen as a problem to be solved, and not a providence from God.
-- Matt Chandler -
-
Our generation was supposed to be about trying to deal with nuclear concerns and environmental disasters.
-- Michael Stipe -
We don't have a prayer of defeating the Red Threat of our generation without a long boom of almost unprecedented duration.
-- Mitch Daniels -
In terms of wilderness preservation, Alaska is the last frontier. This time, given one great final chance, let us strive to do it right. Not in our generation, nor ever again, will we have a land and wildlife opportunity approaching the scope and importance of this one.
-- Mo Udall -
I have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism.
-- Moshe Sharett -
-
It’s our generation that is witnessing the end of Western predominance. The average American used to be more than 20 times richer than the average Chinese. Now it’s just five times, and soon it will be 2.5 times.
-- Niall Ferguson -
Most of my friends between 21 and 31 are at different stages of figuring out what the hell they are going to do with their lives. It's a big part of our generation. What is the next step?
-- Orlando Jones -
The only generation that can reach this generation is our generation.
-- Oswald J. Smith -
Violence against women is the single greatest human rights violation of our generation,
-- Patrick Stewart -
-
Our generation may stand at a crucial breakpoint in history, for we in the presently affluent nations may be the last who can afford to open up the high frontier. What we do during the next ten or twenty years may determine whether future generations will live in a humane and rewarding society, or whether they will spend their lives in desperate contention for the dwindling sustenance afforded by our limited terrestrial resources.
-- Philip K. Chapman -
In our generation, the role models were Gandhi and Nehru. We revered them. They were venerated personalities. I read almost every speech of Nehru.
-- Pranab Mukherjee -
I believe that there is a great fear in our generation of being labeled as priggish.
-- Queen Elizabeth II -
Justice needs money; it always has . . . whether for abolition of slavery and early women's rights movements or the civil rights and environmental drives of our generation.
-- Ralph Nader -
-
For us, terrorism remains the great evil of our time, and the war against this evil, our generation’s great cause … There is no middle way for Americans: it is victory or holocaust.
-- Richard Perle -
I was doing a play out in L.A. 20-some-odd years ago called 'Goose and Tomtom' by David Rabe, and somebody saw it and the next thing I know I'm doing the table read of the film version of 'Glengarry Glen Ross' with Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon - one of the great films of our generation.
-- Richard Schiff -
I believe that this could very well be looked back on as the sin of our generation...I believe that our children and their children, 40 or 50 years from now, are going to ask me, what did you do while 40 million children became orphans in Africa?
-- Richard Stearns -
The invention of film has given our generation the dubious advantage of watching our acting heroes deteriorate before our eyes.
-- Robert Brustein -
-
The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased.
-- Samuel Beckett -
Sustainable development is not an option! It is the only path that allows all of humanity to share a decent life on this, one planet. Rio+20 gives our generation the opportunity to choose this path.
-- Sha Zukang -
We have simply arrived too late in the history of the universe to see this primordial simplicity easily ... But although the symmetries are hidden from us, we can sense that they are latent in nature, governing everything about us. That's the most exciting idea I know: that nature is much simpler than it looks. Nothing makes me more hopeful that our generation of human beings may actually hold the key to the universe in our hands-that perhaps in our lifetimes we may be able to tell why all of what we see in this immense universe of galaxies and particles is logically inevitable.
-- Steven Weinberg -
It seems to me that the conquest of the air is the only major task for our generation.
-- T. E. Lawrence -
-
Our generation has an incredible amount of realism, yet at the same time it loves to complain and not really change. Because, if it does change, then it won't have anything to complain about.
-- Tori Amos -
This generation, our generation of people who benefited, must always be the pioneers who look to younger people and say mediocrity is not accommodated in what we do.
-- Trevor Manuel -
We are in a strange kind of time, where the kind of liberation movements such as anti-apartheid movements and freedom struggles in India need to be reinvented. We need to retool them so that all the gains that our generation has made can be passed on to future generations.
-- Vandana Shiva -
In the cruel and terrible time in which our generation has been condemned to live on this earth, we must never make peace with evil. We must never become indifferent to others or undemanding of ourselves.
-- Vasily Grossman -
-
It is not difficult to understand why the great God of heaven has reserved these special spirits for the final work of the kingdom prior to his millennial reign.... This generation will face trials and troubles that will exceed those of their pioneer forebears. Our generation has had periods of some respite from the foe. The future generation will have little or none....This is a chosen generation.... I believe today's [Church youth] will lead the youth of the world through the most trying time in history.
-- Vaughn J Featherstone -
Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
-- Viktor E. Frankl -
I am a huge fan of Alan Furst. Furst is the best in the business--the most talented espionage novelist of our generation.
-- Vince Flynn -
The experience of our generation: that capitalism will not die a natural death.
-- Walter Benjamin -
-
Angry Black White Boy is bananas! Actually, it's a banana split with razor blades in it. Adam Mansbach is the white Richard Wright, and Angry Black White Boy is our generation's Native Son.
-- William Upski Wimsatt -
It's not our fault our generation has short attention spans, Dad. We watch an appalling amount of TV.
-- Yeardley Smith -
I'm not a genius. I just worked really, really hard, and I want our generation, our children and our future generations to realize that they can fulfill the same dreams.
-- Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa -
[T]he presence of feminism in our lives is taken for granted. For our generation, feminism is like fluoride. We scarcely notice we have it - it's simply in the water.
-- Amy Richards -
-
In our generation there is no agreed-upon framework. All issues are up for grabs. Morality no longer has any broad-based theology upon which to rest its case. We are no longer a 'Christian nation,' not even a 'Judeo-Christian culture.'
-- F. LaGard Smith -
When the people of a nation stop communicating, they lose the common purpose that made them great. Their cities become ghost towns. People live aimlessly because they have no cause for which they are willing to die. The cry of the populace is 'Just leave me alone'. Perhaps the ultimate hell is that the wish will be granted. It is not unlikely that our own nation will collapse not through an explosive roar, but through a deafening silence. This silence must be broken in our generation. We may never get another chance.
-- Jeff Myers -
The challenge of our generation, whether it's young lawyers, young investment bankers, is to make capitalism work for people not just around the corner, but for people all around the world.
-- Kabir Sehgal -
Our generation must fulfill the most noble of duties by ensuring the survival of future generations through the most basic of survival mechanisms - adaptation.
-- Leilani Munter -
-
Daniel Johnston is the purist and most unpretentious artist of our generation
-- Mark Linkous -
I think Paris Hilton is really our generation's Marilyn Monroe. She's the image of the youth today. There's a real fascination with Paris, ranging on the obsessive. I'm repulsed by her, but because of her notoriety, she has access to an audience.
-- Matt Tong -
God is raising up a new standard, a new banner if you will, that's going to radically change the expression, the understanding of Christianity in our generation.
-- Paul Cain -
One thing is funny because my grandparents are going to come see the show and my mom was concerned that they wouldn't understand, because so much of it is Internet-based. Our generation specifically really relates to it, because we were the first people to discover the Internet and most of us can maybe navigate the Internet better than our parents can. All this information you could ever possibly know is right at our fingertips, not to mention the fact you can meet anyone!
-- Sarah Steele -
-
My parents joined in the 60s and at that time it was really important - there was a group mentality. I could be pulling this out of my ass, but I feel our generation approaches things on a more individual basis, like we're more personal and don't need to be a part of a group.
-- Taraka Larson -
I think Eddie Izzard is one of the brightest minds of our generation. I don't see him as a comedian as much as I see him as a philosopher. I hope I get to work with him on everything until I die, because I think he has a great mind and is a very talented actor.
-- Bryan Fuller -
I think the gap between Israelis and Palestinians is too deep to be bridged in our generation. Politically, we are in favor of a regional solution. A part of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) should be annexed by Israel, and the other parts should be incorporated in a confederation with Jordan.
-- Ayelet Shaked -
It crosses my mind that our generation may leave problems that are simply too hard for human society in the generations that follow. The structures that separate civilisation from disorder are thin and fragile. (But) I am not gloomy by nature so don't presume that the global community will fail the young people.
-- Ross Garnaut -
