Kirk Douglas Quotes

There is the expectation that a younger generation has the opportunity to redeem the crimes and failings of their elders and would have the strength and idealism to do so.

I'm really disturbed by the degree to which I don't hear people saying, "Are we leaving the world better than we found it?" I think we are a generation that perhaps could not answer in the affirmative, and it is the evasion of the larger responsibility of being only one generation in what one hopes will be an infinite series of fruitful generations. There is a selfishness in refusing to understand that we are passing through; others will come, and they deserve certain courtesies and certain considerations from us.

The American people have to think hard about their definition of the meaning of the good life, that hedonistic, materialistic society of high levels of consumption, increasing social inequality is not a society that can be part of the solution of the world's problems.

The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity.

I can't stomach the thought that we are passing down to the next generation a country that is less viable, less good, less competitive, less compassionate than the one we got.

We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.

We are at risk of turning over to the next generation a worse life than we have had.

Whatever your age, think about the young generation. And try to give them back the future being taken from them.

Without collective awakening the catastrophe will come. I think people in the mass media, journalists, film makers and others, you can contribute to the collective awakening if you are awake and then your life will embody that awakening.

Climate change that is occurring right now is causing so much suffering all around the world. Whether it's adding 30 million people to the "at risk of starvation" list in 2008, whether it's the floods in Pakistan, or entire cultures at risk of disappearing, or desertification in Africa - all these things that are currently being caused by climate change. I think it's something that a lot of people want to figure out: how to make the shift, how to help. It seems like such an overwhelming problem.

People talk about apathy, especially in developed countries. We're kind of lulled into these tranquil lives, and we are pursuing our own thing and there is so much suffering on a mass scale around the world that you kind of become fatalistic. You might think suffering is inevitable, you kind of lose your sense of moral urgency. But there is always something you can do for someone in the world.

I think the generational change is going to be so important for Africa that we really should encourage and push it as much as we can, because some of these younger men and women, who are men and women of their times, and are also connected to the rest of the world, wouldn't even know how to behave in the way some of the old leaders do.

I belive power can be used for good, I don't think every form of power is absolute evil. I wish I would have stepped in, and I really regret it. And that's why I really encourage young people who are organizing to speak up.

You know the old expression "We haven't inherited the world from our parents, we've borrowed it from our children"? Well it's just not true. We haven't borrowed anything.

I can be a voice. I can use my platform to help the younger generation. I think it's really important for them to understand how to do things the right way, and not just in sports, in life in general.

I'm not saying running could solve all of the world's problems, but I think it would be a good start.

You know how many reasons we have to be desperate and despairing, the world is not learning anything. We have seen that.

I think of the kids that live on top of garbage dumps, I think of the ways we could reach out to other countries, I think of certainly climate change. There's so much. The nighttime is that time, is it not?

Business cannot succeed in a world that is failing.

We are the people and America is really nothing without the people. We have to take control and we have realize as young people that this is our future. We have to live here and this where we'll one day raise our own children.

How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say I knew what was happening to the world and did nothing.

God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath.

Wild beasts and birds are by right not the property merely of the people today, but the property of the unborn generations, whose belongings we have no right to squander.

Adding more people causes problems. But people are also the means to solve these problems. The main fuel to speed the world’s progress is our stock of knowledge; the brakes are our lack of imagination and unsound social regulations of these activities. The ultimate resource is people—especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty—who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefits, and so inevitably they will benefit the rest of us as well.

I see a couple of things missing. Any society, any community, even in the family, when the elders don't do their jobs, the youth suffer. We have no done our job. I'm saying anybody 55 and up. We didn't teach people the basic things.