Generational Burden Quotes

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulations, the sorrow, and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.

Either we pay the government's bills, or we leave them for our kids to pay. It's that simple.

I'm ashamed of what has happened to Canada. And I'm not leaving a $1.5 trillion deficit to my kids. No chance in hell is that happening.

Our pandering politicians compete to add names to the dependency of entitlement rolls instead of evaluating the success of these programs by how many people leave the dole and are restored to an independence. And these bulging entitlements are saddling our offspring with unsustainable generational debt.

Those who say we can continue to indefinitely borrow from our children and grandchildren and generations to come in fact are eroding our ability to do what we ought to do in education, in health care and in other things.

G.E. doesn't pay any taxes, and we are asking college kids to take on even more debt to get an education and asking seniors to get by on less. These aren't just economic questions. These are moral questions.

He thought that the world would make more rapid progress without the burden of old people.

A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses.

The easiest thing that is done, unfortunately, in Washington is to spend money today and send the bill to our children and grandchildren.

What is birth to a man if it shall be a stain to his dead ancestors to have left such an offspring?

It's always the old to lead us to the war. It's always the young to fall.

When the memory of one's predecessors is buried, the assumption persists that there were none and each generation of women believes itself to be faced with the burden of doing everything for the first time. And if no one ever did it beforewhy do we think we can succeed now?

People think you have pressure when you are young. It's the other way round, actually.

The hastily crafted [stimulus] bill, with its corrupt funding of ACORN and other favors, is a disgracefully irresponsible effort to expand the public sector, diminish the private sector, empower the autocrats, and further divest us of our individual liberties - all at the expense of present and future generations.

And I have to tell you as a grandmother, I worry about the fact that my grandchildren are going to be paying for all the spending, including military spending, that has gone on and the tax cuts that have come through.

Interest groups are not the same as individuals. Through false nostalgia for the New Deal, you are taking the younger generation hostage. They are the ones who are going to have to pay far greater taxes. They are the future's forgotten men.

Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.

With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great grandparents, great-aunts…and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own…Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.

Yet if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation; the displacements amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your children's answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring.

There is first the great question between direct taxation and loans. Shall we lay the whole burden of the contest upon the present generation, or divide it between ourselves and posterity ? By an almost universal law of our nature, money lightly gained is lightly spent: a revenue raised at the expense of posterity is sure to be squandered waste fully. Waste, as usual, begetting want, the sums raised by loans will commonly be large. Now these large sums are a mortgage on all the property, on all the industry, on all the skill and ability of a country for ever.

Is this the final treachery of time, that the old become a burden upon the young?

..avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen, which we ourselves ought to bear.

The nation is burdened with the heavy curse on those who come afterwards. The generation before us was inspired by an activism and a naive enthusiasm, which we cannot rekindle, because we confront tasks of a different kind from those which our fathers faced.

I have a huge family name to live up to and a huge legacy to live up to. I feel the pressure of that every day of my life, but I feel like it's a blessing and a curse.

As though there were a tie And obligation to posterity. We get them, bear them, breed, and nurse: What has posterity done for us. That we, lest they their rights should lose, Should trust our necks to gripe of noose?