Hilary Mantel Quotes

Two things have always been true about human beings. One, the world is always getting better. Two, the people living at that time think it's getting worse.

It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.

Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.

I'm a long-term optimist, and I don't think the problems with our society are from being overly optimistic.

In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.

There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age, I missed it coming and going.

Life is not better and more moral than it was in the '50s. It's just the same.

People are always talking about the old days. They say that the old movies were better, that the old actors were so great. But I don't think so. All I can say about the old days is that they have passed.

The young very seldom lead anything in our country today. It's been quite some time since a younger generation pushed an older one to a higher standard.

I only know from my own personal experience, and I personally feel that there's a cyclical nature to things, so you don't want to start making generalizations about how bad things have become in comparison to the old days.

In all my study of history, I have never found a time or place I would rather have lived than now.

The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.

If you look through the century, certain things have gotten better and certain things have gotten worse. I wouldn't say overall that things have gotten better. I think you could say things have gotten worse, but I don't think you could say that things have gotten better. Overall. You can't say that.

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.

Demographics show that we are entering a battle between young and old. I call it the 'Age War.' The young want to hang onto their money to grow their families, businesses, and wealth. The old want the tax and investment dollars of the young to sustain their old age.

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

When people say this isn't the America they grew up in, they're right. Nobody gets to grow old in the America they grew up in.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

Adults must awaken to the urgency of the young people’s unrest—in other words, there must be created an adult unrest against the inequities and injustices in the present system.

The young have strength; the old, knowledge

Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, and the taste of adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn't grow old because he's lived a certain number of years, he grows old because he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skins, but deserting his ideals wrinkles his soul. Preoccupation, fears, doubts, and despair are dust before death. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good, great and receptive to the messages of other men and women and nature and of God. If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man's soul.

History shows us that the youth are usually a step ahead of their elders when change is required.

Even while I protest the assembly-line production of our food, our songs, our language, and eventually our souls, I know that it was a rare home that baked good bread in the old days. Mother’s cooking was with rare exceptions poor, that good unpasteurized milk touched only by flies and bits of manure crawled with bacteria, the healthy old-time life was riddled with aches, sudden death from unknown causes, and that sweet local speech I mourn was the child of illiteracy and ignorance. It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better.

Books are for adults; revolution is for the young.

… modern civilization … enables us to cure sickness on a huge scale and to destroy each other on a huge scale. It enables us to liberate each other on a huge scale and to tyrannize each other on a huge scale…. There is no evidence of any continuous upward line of social progress