Quotes about young
page 34

Jane Ellen Harrison photo
Neville Chamberlain photo
Ana Castillo photo
Luis J. Rodriguez photo
Diana Gabaldon photo

“I was just looking for a time and place in which to set a historical novel because I wanted to practise writing one. I wasn’t going to show it to anyone, let alone get it published, so it didn’t really matter where I set it. I saw this young man in a kilt and thought that was quite fetching, so why not Scotland in the 18th century?”

Diana Gabaldon (1952) American author

On what inspired her to write a historical novel in “Caught Between Two Worlds – Diana Gabaldon Interview” https://www.scotsmagazine.com/articles/diana-gabaldon-outlander-inspiration/ in The Scots Magazine (2018 Mar 2)

Jessica Alba photo

“I was always in trouble with my parents for speaking up and wanting to be an equal part of the conversation. I started working young so I could get that respect.”

Jessica Alba (1981) American model, free-diver and businesswoman; TV and film actress

On working at an early age in order to communicate with her parents in “Jessica Alba's Reinvention” https://www.redbookmag.com/life/money-career/a19434170/jessicaalba/ in Redbook (2018 Mar 15)

Buckminster Fuller photo

“The young world is giving up any interest in their political system. They have decided that it is absolutely corrupt.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)

Plutarch photo
Plutarch photo
Kapka Kassabova photo
Newton Lee photo
Maurice Barrès photo

“Young men in meetings put in common nothing but their mediocrity.”

Maurice Barrès (1862–1923) French novelist

Source: Pène du Bois (1897), p. 99.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar photo
William Faulkner photo
William Faulkner photo
William Faulkner photo
Benjamin Zephaniah photo

“When I start, I have a story that tends to have a lesson to be learnt. A lot of the time my novels are called novels for young adults and I think one of the reasons they are popular with young adults is because they read them and understand it…”

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958) English poet and author

On the appeal of his writings in “Interview | Benjamin Zephaniah” https://www.thelondonmagazine.org/interview-benjamin-zephaniah/ in the London Magazine (2018 Mar 5)

William Blake photo
Ernest Becker photo

“When we appreciate how natural it is for man to strive to be a hero, how deeply it goes in his evolutionary and organismic constitution, how openly he shows it as a child, then it is all the more curious how ignorant most of us are, consciously, of what we really want and need. In our culture anyway, especially in modern times, the heroic seems too big for us, or we too small for it. Tell a young man that he is entitled to be a hero and he will blush. We disguise our struggle by piling up figures in a bank book to reflect privately our sense of heroic worth. Or by having only a little better home in the neighborhood, a bigger car, brighter children. But underneath throbs the ache of cosmic specialness, no matter how we mask it in concerns of smaller scope. Occasionally someone admits that he takes his heroism seriously, which gives most of us a chill, as did U.S. Congressman Mendel Rivers, who fed appropriations to the military machine and said he was the most powerful man since Julius Caesar. We may shudder at the crassness of earthly heroism, of both Caesar and his imitators, but the fault is not theirs, it is in the way society sets up its hero system and in the people it allows to fill its roles. The urge to heroism is natural, and to admit it honest. For everyone to admit it would probably release such pent-up force as to be devastating to societies as they now are.”

The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic Ideas
The Denial of Death (1973)

Branch Rickey photo

“Folks, this here young man deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Not only because he pitched two no-hitters, but because he got two bonuses from Branch Rickey.”

Branch Rickey (1881–1965) American baseball player and coach

Dizzy Dean, speaking on May 12, 1956 about pitcher Carl Erskine, during a post-game radio interview following Erskine's second career no-hitter; as quoted by Erskine in Tales from the Dodgers' Dugout: A Collection of the Greatest Dodgers Stories Ever Told (2004), p. 70

Jen Wang photo

“I wrote this book for my teenage self, so it’s all about themes that were important to my young self: questioning your identity and gender, but also your creative aspirations and the person you want to be.”

Jen Wang (1984) American comics artist

On her graphic novel The Prince and the Dressmaker in “Exclusive Interview & Graphic Novel Excerpt: Jen Wang’s The Prince and the Dressmaker” https://www.bookish.com/articles/jen-wang-prince-dressmaker/ in Bookish (2018 Feb 8)

Oswald Spengler photo

“All young sects are at bottom hostile to State and property, class and rank, and are attracted to universal equality.”

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) German historian and philosopher

The Hour of Decision (1933)

Pete Buttigieg photo
Krystal Ball photo
Doris Veillette photo

“If the young terrorists had a mother with a heart full of love, they would not think of making the revolution, but to build in this country that does not lack corners to exploit.”

Doris Veillette (1935–2019) Quebec journalist

Editor's note: Chronicle published in following the assassination of Quebec Minister Pierre Laporte.
Chronicle "Interdit aux hommes" (Forbidden to men), by Doris Veillette-Hamel, Journal Le Nouvelliste, Oct 20, 1970, page 18.
Chronicle "Forbidden to men", 1970

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo

“There can thus be no manner of doubt that the Muslim Society in India is afflicted by the same social evils as afflict the Hindu Society. Indeed, the Muslims have all the social evils of the Hindus and something more. That something more is the compulsory system of purdah for Muslim women. As a consequence of the purdah system, a segregation of the Muslim women is brought about. The ladies are not expected to visit the outer rooms, verandahs, or gardens; their quarters are in the back-yard. All of them, young and old, are confined in the same room. …She cannot go even to the mosque to pray, and must wear burka (veil) whenever she has to go out. These burka women walking in the streets is one of the most hideous sights one can witness in India. Such seclusion cannot but have its deteriorating effects upon the physical constitution of Muslim women. They are usually victims to anaemia, tuberculosis, and pyorrhoea. Their bodies are deformed, with their backs bent, bones protruded, hands and feet crooked. Ribs, joints and nearly all their bones ache. Heart palpitation is very often present in them. The result of this pelvic deformity is untimely death at the time of delivery. Purdah deprives Muslim women of mental and moral nourishment. Being deprived of healthy social life, the process of moral degeneration must and does set in. Being completely secluded from the outer world, they engage their minds in petty family quarrels, with the result that they become narrow and restricted in their outlook. They lag behind their sisters from other communities, cannot take part in any outdoor activity and are weighed down by a slavish mentality and an inferiority complex. They have no desire for knowledge, because they are taught not to be interested in anything outside the four walls of the house. Purdah women in particular become helpless, timid, and unfit for any fight in life. … Not that purdah and the evils consequent thereon are not to be found among certain sections of the Hindus in certain parts of the country. But the point of distinction is that among the Muslims, purdah has a religious sanctity which it has not with the Hindus. Purdah has deeper roots among the Muslims than it has among the Hindus, and can only be removed by facing the inevitable conflict between religious injunctions and social needs. The problem of purdah is a real problem with the Muslims—apart from its origin—which it is not with the Hindus. Of any attempt by the Muslims to do away with it, there is no evidence.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)

Donald J. Trump photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“You know, if you’re young, and in this era, and if you have any guilt about not having gone to Vietnam, we have our own Vietnam—it’s called the dating game… Dating is like being in Vietnam. You’re the equivalent of a soldier going over to Vietnam.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

An interview on The Howard Stern Show, 1993, archived by People https://people.com/politics/trump-boasted-of-avoiding-stds-while-dating-vaginas-are-landmines-it-was-my-personal-vietnam/
1990s

Reggie Yates photo

“I’m very aware of the time I have on this planet…I lost loved ones at a young age. I realise the platform I have and the responsibility I have, and I’m aware of my mortality. No one like me has ever had this opportunity, so I’d be a fool not to make the most of it.”

Reggie Yates (1983) English actor, television presenter and radio DJ

On the scope of his current projects in “Reggie Yates on The Insider: ‘What I’m doing, no one else is doing’” https://www.thejackalmagazine.com/reggie-yates-interview in The Jackal Magazine (2017 Mar 10)

Adolf Hitler photo
Mao Zedong photo
Mao Zedong photo

“Young people should be permitted to make mistakes. As long as their general orientation is correct, let them make minor mistakes. I believe that they can correct themselves in practical work.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Directives on the Cultural Revolution (1966-1972)

Milton Friedman photo
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston photo
Nicolás Maduro photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Jack Kirby photo
Adam West photo

“I happen to think that videogames are an ideal means to help broaden the imaginations of young people.”

Adam West (1928–2017) American actor

"The Keyboard: Guest Editorials", Videogaming Illustrated, (July 1983), p. 6

Michael Foot photo
Charles Stross photo

“We’re up the highway from Colorado Springs. The holy rollers are big in Colorado. Mostly they’re harmless, ’long as you’re not a young woman in search of an abortion.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 10, “Things To Do in Denver When You’re Doomed” (pp. 182-183)

Charles Stross photo

“I’m only twenty-eight: I’m too young to die and too old to drive fast.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 1, “Random Ramona” (p. 19)

Francisco Aragón photo

“The advice to any young poet is to embrace your freedom and not feel constrained to write in one particular way or only about one particular topic. If they’re Latino poets, I would encourage them not only to read widely, but also to read Latino poetry, to familiarize themselves with their particular tradition within American literature…”

Francisco Aragón (1968) poet

On his advice to Latino poets in “Interview with Francisco Aragón: Latino Poetry From All Its Perspectives” https://www.sampsoniaway.org/literary-voices/2010/09/16/interview-with-francisco-aragon-latino-poetry-from-all-its-perspectives/ in Sampsonia Way (2010 Sept 16)

Tsitsi Dangarembga photo
Jacqueline Woodson photo
Nawal El-Saadawi photo

“I’m surrounded by young people, day and night. Thousands of them. The government is afraid of the young, and they won’t touch me because they know I have the power of the young people behind me.”

Nawal El-Saadawi (1931) Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician and psychiatrist

On how writers like her are protected by the younger generation since the 2011 revolution in Egypt in “Nawal El Saadawi: ‘Do you feel you are liberated? I feel I am not’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/11/nawal-el-saadawi-interview-do-you-feel-you-are-liberated-not in The Guardian (2015 Oct 11)

Bernie Sanders photo
Bernie Sanders photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Mary McCarthy photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo

“Kinship is universal. The orders, families, species, and races of the animal kingdom are the branches of a gigantic arbour. Every individual is a cell, every species is a tissue, and every order is an organ in the great surging, suffering, palpitating process. Man is simply one portion of the immense enterprise. He is as veritably an animal as the insect that drinks its little fill from his veins, the ox he goads, or the wild-fox that flees before his bellowings. Man is not a god, nor in any imminent danger of becoming one. He is not a celestial star-babe dropped down among mundane matters for a time and endowed with wing possibilities and the anatomy of a deity. He is a mammal of the order of primates, not so lamentable when we think of the hyena and the serpent, but an exceedingly discouraging vertebrate compared with what he ought to be. He has come up from the worm and the quadruped. His relatives dwell on the prairies and in the fields, forests, and waves. He shares the honours and partakes of the infirmities of all his kindred. He walks on his hind-limbs like the ape; he eats herbage and suckles his young like the ox; he slays his fellows and fills himself with their blood like the crocodile and the tiger; he grows old and dies, and turns to banqueting worms, like all that come from the elemental loins. He cannot exceed the winds like the hound, nor dissolve his image in the mid-day blue like the eagle. He has not the courage of the gorilla, the magnificence of the steed, nor the plaintive innocence of the ring-dove. Poor, pitiful, glory-hunting hideful! Born into a universe which he creates when he comes into it, and clinging, like all his kindred, to a clod that knows him not, he drives on in the preposterous storm of the atoms, as helpless to fashion his fate as the sleet that pelts him, and lost absolutely in the somnambulism of his own being.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Conclusion", p. 101
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Physical Kinship

J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Abbie Hoffman photo
Tony Benn photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Lewis Black photo
H.L. Mencken photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Charley Toorop photo

“The new artist-society will consist of painters, sculptors and architects. The founders don’t intend that the character of the union will be determined by one single art movement. They believe that there is room for every important expression of this period and they intend the new union as a gathering place for the best young artists, who will collectively determine the character of the society.”

Charley Toorop (1891–1955) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: tekst in circulaire van Charley Toorop, in het Nederlands:) De nieuwe vereeniging zal bestaan uit schilders, beeldhouwers en architecten. De oprichters stellen zich niet op het standpunt, dat het karakter der vereeniging door één enkele kunstrichting bepaald wordt. Zy gelooven dat voor iedere belangrijke uiting van deze tyd plaats is en bedoelen de nieuwe vereeniging als verzamelplaats voor de beste jonge kunstenaars, die gezamenlyk het karakter van de vereeniging bepalen.
text of Charley Toorop, in a circular for possible members of the new artist-society 'A.S.B.', Amsterdam 8 Dec. 1926; in the Archive J.J.P. Oud, Nederlands Architectuur museum, Rotterdam
before 1930

Hugo Chávez photo
Chris Cornell photo

“Hip-hop kind of absorbed rock, in terms of the attitude and the whole point of why rock was important music. Young people felt like rock music was theirs, from Elvis to the Beatles to the Ramones to Nirvana. This was theirs; it wasn’t their parents’. I think hip-hop became the musical style that embraces that mentality.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Chris Cornell Flashback Q&A: 'We Have to Be Aware That Life Is So Short', Yahoo!, May 19, 2017 https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/chris-cornell-flashback-qa-aware-life-short-023857577.html,
Solo career Era

Charles Webster Leadbeater photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Tulsi Gabbard photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Charles Darwin photo

“As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. How little the old Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually through public opinion.”

volume I, chapter III: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals — continued", pages 100-101 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=113&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Erykah Badu photo

“I can see the evidence of that when I listen to music or hear young artists talk and they’re not shy at all about telling me thank you for the things I’ve contributed to them.”

Erykah Badu (1971) American neo-soul singer

On her influence on younger artists in “'I'm not sorry I said it': Erykah Badu on music, motherhood and wildly unpopular opinions” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/24/erykah-badu-interview in The Guardian (2018 May 24)

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto photo
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez photo
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez photo
Vikram Sarabhai photo
Jesse Jackson photo
Naomi Klein photo

“Thunberg and the many other amazing young organizers have been very clear that they do not want adults to pat them on the head and thank them for the hope infusion. They want us to join them and fight for the future alongside them. Because it is their right. And all of our duty.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Greta Thunberg on the Climate Fight: If We Can Save the Banks, Then We Can Save the World, https://theintercept.com/2019/09/13/greta-thunberg-naomi-klein-climate/ The Intercept (13 September 2019)

Jan Smuts photo
Yuval Noah Harari photo
Poul Anderson photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Tucker Carlson photo

“Tucker Carlson began at The Weekly Standard. Tucker Carlson was a great young reporter. He was one of the most gifted 24-year-olds I’ve seen in the 20 years that I edited the magazine. His copy was sort of perfect at age 24.He had always a little touch of Pat Buchananism, I would say, paleo-conservativism.”

Tucker Carlson (1969) American political commentator

But that’s very different from what he’s become now. I mean, it is close now to racism, white — I mean, I don’t know if it’s racism exactly — but ethno-nationalism of some kind, let’s call it. A combination of dumbing down, as you said earlier, and stirring people’s emotions in a very unhealthy way.
Bill Kristol, January 25, 2018 ([Bill Kristol takes on Fox News, Tucker Carlson: ‘I don’t know if it’s racism exactly – but ethno-nationalism of some kind’, w:John Harwood, John, Harwood, January 25, 2018, NBC News, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/24/bill-kristol-takes-on-fox-news-tucker-carlson.html, CNBC])

Vasyl Slipak photo

“Vasyl Slipak showed by his example an incredible will of Ukrainians to defend their native land. As a volunteer fighter, he demonstrated an example of patriotism and self-sacrifice to many, particularly our young people.”

Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer

2018
Serhii VASYLIUK, front man of the band “Tin’ Sontsia”. Vasyl Slipak Park is sure to be! // The Day. — 2018. — 28 February. https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/culture/vasyl-slipak-park-sure-be

Vince Cable photo
Hendrik Verwoerd photo
Alexander Herzen photo
William H. Crogman photo

“Old enough to look as if he knew what to do, young enough to look as if he could do it.”

Steve Perry (1947) American writer

Source: The Tejano Conflict (2014), Chapter 4