My Generation Quotes

#1. In my view, the greatest threat to America's future isn't hiding in a cave in Pakistan or Afghanistan; it's right here at home. Baby boomers like myself are on course to become the first generation of Americans who leave things in worse shape than they found them.

David Walker

#2. Unlike people of my generation, my children and my grandchildren have grown up living with, knowing, people who were outwardly gay and lesbian. And they have learned that they're just like us ... And when you see that they're just like us, the rationale for discrimination melts away.

David Boies

#3. It was feminism that made it possible for women to go to the Ivy League and women to be astronauts and women to have their own TV shows. What happened, though, was that the generation after feminism, which is my generation, misunderstood what feminism was saying.

Debora Spar

#4. More and more good actors are now transmigrating into the videogame space and playing roles there because it's where my generation of kids get stories from.

Andy Serkis

#5. My first record wasn't even with the Fugees. I was signed to Big Beat Records, so I was signed back in 1989 to the label that the Knocks are on now. You can always tell which generation had the pulse based on how they see things.

Wyclef Jean

#6. I'm Nancy Pelosi, but my grandchildren call me Mimi. For me, politics is an extension of my role as a mother and a grandmother. For the Democratic women of the House, our work is not about the next election, but rather the next generation.

Nancy Pelosi

#7. I was sorting through my mother's things. All the letters from friends had to go. I don't know why she kept them, and now they meant nothing to anybody alive. Each generation flushes the toilet for the last.

Lucy Ellmann

#8. Science chases money
and money chases its tail
and the best minds of my generation can't make bail.
But the bacteria are coming
that's my prediction.
It's the answer to this culture
of the quick-fix prescription.

Ani DiFranco

#9. I know my generation - a lot of them, they're getting old now, and they want to think back fondly, they want to kid themselves. A lot of them think, 'Yeah, we were the best.' That's the kiss of death. That's non-growth. And also that's very bad for the world.

Joni Mitchell

#10. My older brother, Jake, and I had a bohemian childhood. My parents are deeply unconventional people from the beatnik generation. They weren't married, and I thought that was normal. We called them by their first names.

Rachel Kushner

#11. I have been a huge nerd to my kids. I haven't done the cool movies that they like. With '24,' I gained a lot of respect. '24' is now, it's hip, it's their generation.

Ricky Schroder

#12. I'm 33, my generation, when I was young, we'd go out into the woods for the entire day and come back for dinner. I was definitely a kid of the '80s, who was out and about.

Lissie

#13. I suspect millions of people from my generation probably have comparable stories to tell: if not of sports simulations then of Dungeons & Dragons, or the geopolitical strategy of games like Diplomacy, a kind of chess superimposed onto actual history.

Steven Johnson

#14. The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.

Vivienne Westwood

#15. I belong to the highest class there is: I'm a third generation celebrity. My grandfather, father, and I have all been on the cover of Time. That's all there is. You can't go any higher in America.

Gore Vidal

#16. My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories - not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father's generation. It's a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.

Haruki Murakami

#17. A lot of filmmakers from my generation were lucky enough to have their work more or less perpetuated by people who saw them originally on TV and on HBO and certainly on home video.

Joe Dante

#18. My ultimate goal is for that next generation coming up, who didn't see me play, go, 'Oh, he used to play football?'

Michael Strahan

#19. The 2 timeless drivers that underpin the behavior of every generation: the need to belong and the need to be significant. The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

#20. My mom and dad are second-generation Greek-Americans who instilled in our middle-class family the values of hard work, self-reliance, and service, exemplified by my father's tenure as a U.S. Marine who was stationed at Camp David under President Truman.

James Costos

#21. People are dying and my generation just does not care. Including me. But I want to care. I really want to. I want to care so bad.

Charles Yu

#22. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I didn't really know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down ... I was a very public failure.

Steve Jobs

#23. Our grandparents' generation never expected too much out of life and, paradoxically, were happier for it. It never occurred to my granddad that he would enjoy work. He hated it from the day he walked through the factory gates at 14 to when he left at 65.

Mark Barrowcliffe

#24. I truly believe that women of my generation can bring a new cleansing element to American public life.

Georgie Anne Geyer

#25. When a technology, regardless of how different and difficult it is, sustains the trajectory of performance improvement, my research asserts that the leaders in the prior generation of technology are likely to end up on top of their industry at the end of the transition.

Clayton Christensen

#26. When my parents met, my mother was a waitress and my father was a dockyard worker. They were part of that post-war better-yourself generation, so they both went to night school.

Alison Owen

#27. Men of my father's generation were perpetual hustlers, always on the make and always on the move.

Shawn Amos

#28. Screw being a singer! I wanna be the voice of my generation with my talk show.

Tyra Banks

#29. I honestly believe that people of my generation despise authenticity, mostly because they're all so envious of it.

Chuck Klosterman

#30. Shirley Jackson enjoyed notoriety and commercial success within her lifetime, and yet it still hardly seems like enough for a writer so singular. When I meet readers and other writers of my generation, I find that mentioning her is like uttering a holy name.

Victor LaValle

#31. What we have created instead, as customers and employers and investors, is mountains of paper wealth so enormous that a handful of people in charge of them can take millions and billions for themselves without hurting anyone. Apparently.

Many members of my generation are disappointed.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

#32. Gay marriage will be universally accepted in time. But if I may be so bold as to say to gays and lesbians, don't wait for that time to arrive. Just as my father and his generation did not 'wait' for their civil rights, nor should you. The toothpaste ain't going back in the tube. The tide has turned.

John Ridley

#33. I wanted to build a tool for my generation: people 20 to 40 who don't want to spend time balancing a checkbook or checking multiple financial institutions' websites. Mint does just that, giving comprehensive, quick insights into a user's finances from their computer, mobile phone and/or tablet.

Aaron Patzer

#34. I think it's interesting: What is the generational effect of the experience of being a gay person in America? For my generation, it was very difficult.

Ira Sachs

#35. Democracy! Bah! When I hear that word I reach for my feather boa!

Allen Ginsberg

#36. When I crawled down the rabbit hole into the pivotal event of my life--indeed the pivotal event of my generation--to write "Escape from Saigon - a Novel" I never expected it to be such an emotional journey into a life I left four decades ago.

Dick Pirozzolo

#37. I get the, you know, 'In my generation, we all had victory gardens, we all participated in this country's success.' It's that kind of sentiment that I hear from everybody, that we're all in this together.

Patty Murray

#38. I think some of that hopelessness of my generation got passed on to later generations - the sense of uselessness.

Patti Smith

#39. In the 21st century, I think it's fair to say, homosexuality is more accepted in Britain and it's wonderful that my generation has been able to grow up with that.

Dan Stevens

#40. My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become the imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test.

Ellen Goodman

#41. My mother is Greek and my father is Bulgarian. I am a first-generation American and native Los Angeleno. I was born and raised in Hollywood.

Rita Wilson

#42. 'General Hospital' was so massive in the 80s and that's when people my age or even younger watched that show. A generation grew up on that show, Luke and Laura, I came in on the cusp of that so there's still a lot of 'Frisco.'

Jack Wagner

#43. I didn't fully realize it at the time, but the goal of my life was profoundly molded by this experience - to help produce, in the next generation, more Mother Teresas and less Hitlers.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

#44. If you look at tennis, the girls have become much more attractive; they wear makeup. In my generation, you were a tennis player. It wasn't like you had to look a certain way.

Monica Seles

#45. On a bigger level, 9/11 was a crystallizing moment for my generation ... the bubble popped. We were like, 'Whoa, this is what the real world is like; it's not all fun and games.'

Matt Gallagher

#46. My grandmother raised me for a good portion of my life. She moved to Los Angeles with me to be an actor, so I've always had a connection with an older generation.

Britt Robertson

#47. When punk came along, I found my generation's music. I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, 'cause that was what got played in the house. But when I first saw the Stranglers, I thought, 'This is it.'

Robert Smith

#48. Today's younger generation is no worse than my own. We were just as ignorant and repulsive as they are, but nobody listened to us.

Al Capp

#49. Pakistan's future viability, stability and security lie in empowering its people and building political institutions. My goal is to prove that the fundamental battle for the hearts and minds of a generation can be accomplished only under democracy.

Benazir Bhutto

#50. 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

#51. I've been blessed. I grew up and played and worked and created with the Freddie Mercury, the Jimi Hendrix, the Keith Richards, the John Paul Jones of my generation.

Steven Adler

#52. Passed down from generation to generation, storytelling was an art in my family.

David Mixner

#53. Like many science fiction lovers of my generation, I discovered Andre Norton on the shelves at the junior high's library.

Sherwood Smith

#54. When my generation grew up, our only sources of knowledge were books, teachers, parents and friends. The encyclopedia was an item of luxury. We faced big limits in what we could learn, where we could be and who we could reach.

Vivek Wadhwa

#55. Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation.

Raquel Cepeda

#56. Christine O'Donnell is making a mockery of running for public office. She has no real history, no real success in any kind of business. And what that sends to my generation is, one day, you can just wake up and run for Senate, no matter how [much] lack of experience you have.

Meghan McCain

#57. I am Emperor, my descendants will be numerous. From the second generation to the ten thousandth, my line will not end.

Qin Shi Huang

#58. For women of my generation, it was the 'juggling act.' Jobs, marriage, children, homes, and aging parents were the balls we added, tossing them in the air as our lives filled up and praying they wouldn't come crashing down on our heads.

Willow Bay

#59. My daddy expected that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He had lived in an America of continual social progress.

Wynton Marsalis

#60. Really, each era has its own false nostalgia. We all put a picket fence up around something. For my generation it was the '50s, and for other generations it will be something else. Change is scary for everyone, as is complexity, contradiction, and an uncertain future.

Gary Ross

#61. In my generation, there was a single girl given the strength and skill to fight the spread of darkness ... but in your generation, there are nearly two thousand with the powers of the slayer, and not all of them have chosen to use their newfound abilities conscientiously.

Joss Whedon

#62. We all know far too many stories where the third generation just destroys everything that the first two have built up, and I certainly hope my family are different because I've worked too hard and my father has worked too hard for it to be given away.

Gina Rinehart

#63. My parents gave up a lot to bring me up in the little house on the prairie, and I wasn't prepared to make those sacrifices, nor was the generation before me and the generation after.

Tony Parsons

#64. But look, I was born in 1956, the peak year for births in US history. I think I'm very representative of many of the thought processes my generation have been through and, by and large, people of my age have had their imprint planted on the consciousness of western society for a long time.

Tom Hanks

#65. My parents were both from extremely different backgrounds. My father's Italian, my mother was of Swedish descent. They're both first-generation Americans.

Susan Lucci

#66. Sincerity is a Christian virtue, as is honesty about our struggles. But my generation needs to realize that Christianity is more than chic fragility, endless self-revelation, and the coolness that comes with authenticity.

Kevin DeYoung

#67. I look at Lil Wayne as being from my generation.

Timbaland

#68. I'm really into my photography and am trying to catch up with digital generation - I was used to the old 35mm cameras.

David Suchet

#69. The younger generation will come knocking at my door.

Henrik Ibsen

#70. my generation's screwed - we're not the immigrant experience, we're not the assimilation experience - we're the first nothing generation, we've got nothing to write about and no one to read it, everyone too busy getting technologized, too harried with degrees.

Joshua Cohen

#71. The trauma of the Sixties persuaded me that my generation's egalitarianism was a sentimental error. I now see the hierarchical as both beautiful and necessary. Efficiency liberates; egalitarianism tangles, delays, blocks, deadens.

Camille Paglia

#72. My father and my uncle used to be amateur monologuists because their generation grew up with Henry Irving and the like, and they had that style of delivery, of declamation: 'The Belllllls!' What we call 'ham' now, larger than life.

Ron Moody

#73. The generation that migrated to the West in the 1970s or 1960s has now lived more in the West than India, and India has changed so much. My parents fall into that category.

Archie Panjabi

#74. I thought this life of thoughtful liberalism was my birthright, too. Before I understood that my generation was to be born in interesting times.

Maureen F. McHugh

#75. The work of a generation is beginning here, with your hearings, and you have the full measure of my gratitude and support.

Edward Snowden

#76. My idea is to bring out the inner child that my generation has inside, which does not go to sleep because of so much angst over the day-to-day routine. With so much going on, you start tuning out emotions and surprises.

Thalia

#77. I feel connected to my generation through the music, but I also fear for us. We're in a very self-destructive state where we're addicted to outside opinions and we all feel like we have fans.

Drake

#78. Everybody aspires to an affordable home, a secure job, better living standards, reliable healthcare and a decent pension. My generation took those things for granted, and so should future generations.

Jeremy Corbyn

#79. For my generation I must have the oracles of God in fresh terms.

Jim Elliot

#80. I'd like to be remembered as good person and as one of the best comedians of my generation.

Hannibal Buress

#81. I don't see any of my colleagues as rivals. I don't think our generation needs to do that. We are a chilled out lot, and we should all be happy.

Shahid Kapoor

#82. I thought ( ... ) the proverbial glass ceiling had been cracked ( ... ) and I believed that it was just a matter of time until my generation took our fair share of the leadership roles.

Sheryl Sandberg

#83. I like a lot of artists but I think the one that touched me the most was probably Tupac, coming up. Cause that was my generation, so Tupac was mine.

French Montana

#84. Hip-hop is the fountain of youth. You just don't grow up if you were there. My son's 20. I'm on the same channel he's on. We wear the same clothes, we feel the same thing. It's a weird, weird generation we're in right now.

Ice-T

#85. I'm an old school guy and love the guys in the monster suits and JAWS; even though everyone makes fun of the shark I think it's awesome. You know it's fake, but with my generation that was part of the charm.

Larry Fessenden

#86. 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

#87. Really, the values under which my generation was raised in the '50s were immigrant values even though we weren't immigrants. The greatest thing you could be was a college-educated Negro.

Henry Louis Gates

#88. I love his music because he was my generation. But then again, Elvis is everyone's generation, and he always will be.

Margaret Thatcher

#89. My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That's the world in which I grew up, and that's a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.

Ted Cruz

#90. My generation had never known a world without the OASIS. To us, it was much more than a game or an entertainment platform. It had been an integral part of our lives for as far back as we could remember. We'd been born into an ugly world, and the OASIS was our one happy refuge.

Ernest Cline

#91. I am often asked why I started to write poetry. The answer is that my motivation sprang from a visceral need to creatively articulate the experiences of the black youth of my generation, coming of age in a racist society.

Linton Kwesi Johnson

#92. No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.

H.L. Mencken

#93. No matter what job you do, we all have a much different life than our parents had. My parents' generation had one job and then they retired. Now, people have many different jobs.

Kate Walsh

#94. My biggest concern for this generation is your inability to focus, especially in prayer.

Francis Chan

#95. I don't want to live in a bubble, in my craft or in the world ... I can't, I would be cheating myself out of my generation and the world we live in.

Diane Lane

#96. The people that were socially awkward from my generation, they all had paper routes and that taught them the discipline of work.

Temple Grandin

#97. I've struggled so much, growing up, with just feeling that my life is valid because it's not filled with these hyper-dramatic moments, and I think a lot of people of my generation feel that way. We're so inundated with hyper-drama that people crave everyday life.

Ellar Coltrane

#98. The first novel that I wrote was because I was having very interesting sorts of experiences, for Indians of my generation.

Karan Bajaj

#99. My father had a lifelong terror, phobia whatever, about hospitals. Makes a lot of sense in hindsight. He was so scared of doctors, he passed that on to me. That's what parents exist for: to pass their phobias on generation to generation.

Jackie Kay

#100. In my parents' generation, rebellion was pop culture. It's not anymore.

Shia Labeouf