The Greatest Generation Quotes

#1. What we need now is the greatest generation of young adults in the history of the Church. We need your whole heart and soul. In other words, it's time to raise the bar not only for missionaries but also for returned missionaries and for your entire generation.

M. Russell Ballard

#2. World War II brought the Greatest Generation together. Vietnam tore the Baby Boomers apart.

Jim Webb

#3. The Greatest Generation got to save old tires, dig a Victory Garden and forgo sugar. The Richest Generation is being asked to shop.

Margaret Carlson

#4. And now that the Greatest Generation is getting older, I think it is the responsibility of all Americans to make sure we do our part for America's seniors. You have earned the best of America
and we need to make sure you get the protection and health care you deserve.

John F. Kerry

#5. The greatest generation was formed first by the Great Depression. They shared everything - meals, jobs, clothing.

Tom Brokaw

#6. Okay, so maybe they aren't the greatest generation by anyone's standard, but they are surely the best of the bottom third percentile of their own somewhat muddled and suspect generation.

Ben Fountain

#7. If someone tries to tell you you are the greatest generation in the history of America, don't believe them. You aren't. You have the capability to be, but you aren't.

Josh McDowell

#8. It does not have to be that the greatest generation is behind us. It does not have to be that our children will have a lower standard of living. It will be that way if we choose to believe that. I choose not to believe that.

Glenn Beck

#9. I had seen the films out of World War II, the great 82nd Airborne, the 101st, and all of those of you in the greatest generation and the service that you had provided.

Hugh Shelton

#10. There's one big difference between me and the others - I won't take every last dime of the surplus and spend it on tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy. I'll use the bulk of the surplus to secure Social Security far into the future to keep our promise to the greatest generation.

John McCain

#11. The Greatest Generation gets too much credit. Those World War II guys, if they had all the shit we have today, they'd be assholes too. It's just circumstantial. It's what you're called on to do that makes you great. We haven't been called on to do anything but buy shit and get fat.

Louis C.K.

#12. I think the Baby Boom does have a tendency to get its nose in everything. The Greatest Generation had a better tendency to leave people alone. Of course, they also had a better tendency to hate everybody's guts.

P. J. O'Rourke

#13. The response to 'The Greatest Generation' and the books that followed has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my life.

Tom Brokaw

#14. It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced.

Tom Brokaw

#15. The American Dream has been defended, in every generation, by the brave men and women willing to fight and die for America. They are our greatest national treasure. They deserve a serious Commander-in-Chief.

Leon Panetta

#16. The greatest discovery of any generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of their minds.

Albert Schweitzer

#17. We seem trapped in the Short Now. The present generation enjoys the greatest power in history, but it appears to have the shortest vision in history. That combination is lethal.

Stewart Brand

#18. I wanted to work with Cate Blanchett. She is one of the five greatest movie actresses of her generation.

Alec Baldwin

#19. Living peacefully and happily is the best way to show our gratitude and is our greatest gift for the world and the next generation.

Thich Nhat Hanh

#20. I want to be the greatest investigative reporter of my generation.

Michael Hastings

#21. The thing that makes my generation The Greatest is our ability to hang out. We're spectacular at it. If you take somebody from my generation and sit them on a couch and bring them food and plumbing, they'll sit there and talk to you about anything you want until the day you die.

Lewis Black

#22. The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. As you think, so shall you be.

William James

#23. I think documentaries are the greatest way to educate an entire generation that doesn't often look back to learn anything about the history that provided a safe haven for so many of us today.

Steven Spielberg

#24. The greatest sin of our generation is that we have forgotten who we are, and that is what has cost us most. We cry out in disbelief and wonder where our sense of unity has gone.

Jordan Ervin

#25. The idea that I was building a library to bequeath to the next generation is one of the greatest fallacies of my life.

Linda Grant

#26. Alexander McQueen was one of the greatest fashion designers of his generation. His genius, sometimes provocative, admired and saluted by all, constantly opened new perspectives. Visionary and avant-garde, his creations took their inspiration from both tradition and timeless hyper-modernity.

Francois-Henri Pinault

#27. 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

#28. One of the greatest dignities of humankind is that each successive generation is invested in the welfare of each new generation.

Fred Rogers

#29. We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

#30. 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

#31. Industrial opportunities are going to stem more from the biological sciences than from chemistry and physics. I see biology as being the greatest area of scientific breakthroughs in the next generation.

George E. Brown Jr.

#32. The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.

William Jones

#33. William Dalrymple has superseded Mark Tully as the voice of India ... He may well be the greatest travel writer of his generation.

Robert Twigger

#34. Men can see the greatest miracles and miss the glory of God. What generation was ever favored with miracles as Jesus' generations was? Yet that generation crucified the Son of God!

Tom Wells

#35. One of the greatest disconnects for this generation is how life and work fit together. There is a need to talk about purpose in life, vocation, and calling. We need to provide a stronger theology of work to help them make integrated connections to their daily lives.

David Kinnaman

#36. Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the preceding generation.

Richard P. Feynman

#37. Greatest generation came through some stuff that we can't even imagine - the Depression, World War I - and all they wanted after that was a breather and a calm and a quiet life, and they get us.

P. J. O'Rourke

#38. One of the greatest failures of every generation is that it refuses to read the minutes of the last meeting.

David A. Noebel

#39. How often have you know it for the butler who is on everyone's lips one day as the greatest of his generation to be proved demonstrably within a few years to have been nothing of the sort?

Kazuo Ishiguro

#40. How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?

Seth Godin

#41. I don't believe in any Greatest Generation. I believe in great events. They sweep ordinary people up, expose them to extremes of human behavior and unimaginable tests of integrity and courage, and then deposit them back on the home front.

Phil Klay

#42. This generation a Shifter will arise, Hidden amongst the lost and lies. A great many will see The life that could be. The universe will shake; The greatest among us will quake. The towers will fall. The ruled will rule all.

Douglas Pershing

#43. Education is our greatest opportunity to give an irrevocable gift to the next generation.

Ernie Fletcher

#44. 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

#45. The kids I talk to are convinced their generation will make the best music. And the greatest artists have yet to be discovered. I walk around with that thought every day.

L.A. Reid

#46. One of the greatest failures of our generation is not living out the biblical precepts which we so clearly articulate.

Ravi Zacharias

#47. The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.

Adam Smith

#48. The generation that has the greatest access to knowledge in the history of mankind is the one that cares the least about it.

James St. James

#49. 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

#50. Our generation has become well versed in Christian terminology but is remiss in the actual practice of Christ's principles and teachings. Hence, our greatest need today is not more Christianity but more true Christians.

Billy Graham

#51. The ambition of the greatest men of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

Jawaharlal Nehru

#52. Whatever comes next for this generation, that's going to be the greatest voice.

Clancy Brown

#53. I keep saying that, if Samuel L. Jackson and Bette Davis could have a baby, it would be Taraji P. Henson. To me, she's one of the greatest character actors of our generation, let alone leading ladies. She's just phenomenal in everything she does.

Jussie Smollett

#54. The real legacy of Christian homeschooling is people who grow to adulthood and influence a new generation of children. And the greatest tribute possible to the homeschooling parent is to see that work carry forward.

Alexandra Swann

#55. But the challenge is always the same whether each generation facing its own circumstances can summon the practical devotion to attain and retain that greatest good for the greatest number which this government of the people was created to ensure.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#56. Violence against women is the single greatest human rights violation of our generation,

Patrick Stewart

#57. Why does every generation have to think that he lives in the period with the greatest turbulence?

Henry Mintzberg

#58. If you happened to be born on third base, you didn't rub it in the face of the guy who wasn't even born in the stadium. Self-interest was generally checked at the door with your coat and hat.

Ron Suskind

#59. The soil is actually the greatest technology we have for adapting to climate change. And I feel it's our generation's duty to build it back up.

Jason Mraz

#60. A man can pray better because of the prayers of the past; a man can live holier because of the prayers of the past; the man of many and acceptable prayers has done the truest and greatest service to the incoming generation.

Edward McKendree Bounds

#61. There's Dick Van Dyke and John Ritter, the two greatest physical comics of our generation.

Suzanne Somers

#62. To break our addiction to oil is one of the greatest challenges that our generation will have to master.

Barack Obama

#63. It is striking that the observational search for extraterrestrial life began in the same generation as the invention of the telescope, and with the greatest theoretician of the age.

Carl Sagan

#64. If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known.

Leo Tolstoy

#65. Limbaugh can rightly be said to be the greatest populist expositor of conservatism in America since Reagan, and the link between the Reagan generation and the so-called Rush Babies.

Ben Shapiro

#66. We live in freedom because every generation has produced patriots willing to serve a cause greater than themselves. Those who serve nowadays are taking their rightful place among the greatest generations that have worn our nation's uniform.

George W. Bush

#67. It was not, Zelda wrote, prosperity or the softness of life, or any instability that marred the war generation; it was a great emotional disappointment resulting from the fact that life moved in poetic gestures when they were younger and had since settled back into buffoonery.

Nancy Milford

#68. Two of the greatest hungers in our world today are the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social change. The connection between the two is the one the world is waiting for, especially the new generation. And the first hunger will empower the second.

Jim Wallis

#69. I feel that my father's greatest legacy was the people he inspired to get involved in public service and their communities, to join the Peace Corps, to go into space. And really that generation transformed this country in civil rights, social justice, the economy and everything.

Caroline Kennedy

#70. Jim Dean and Elvis were the spokesmen for an entire generation. When I was in acting school in New York, years ago, there was a saying that if Marlon Brando changed the way people acted, then James Dean changed the way people lived. He was the greatest actor who ever lived. He was simply a genius.

Martin Sheen

#71. We have the new greatest generation. We don't need as large a military due to the technology we have, the equipment we have outfitting our personnel. They really are storm troopers.

Joe Wilson