Generational Divide Quotes

If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart, and if you're not a conservative at 40, you have no brain.

A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head.

The problem is my kids are liberal, maybe too liberal, and I have no one to blame but myself because I introduced them to Uncle O.J.

I have never been a Conservative, or at least not since being a young teenager. My father voted Conservative, and even his doing that was a hangover from the '50s and '60s, which may have been an influence on me.

It would be better if only the old men fought the wars. Every country is the country of youth. When its youth dies, it dies with them.

When 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why. And, from the perspective of a broken generational compact, there seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time, and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it.

I'm on the younger end of Gen X, and for me, growing up gay was not cool.

I remember when New Labour got in. I was at Salford Tech studying drama, and everyone was jumping up and down, and I was so upset, I went to a phone box and called my granddad.

My generation, we're so smart and opinionated, and we know the world we want to live in; we know the future we want. We're such a liberal, forward-thinking generation that's been held back by an older generation that doesn't understand it, doesn't want the world to progress quickly because of old ideologies.

My mom is like super cool. I had a young mother. She had me at 16. So me and my mom's relationship is like very vibrant. Like, 'Oh mom, did you hear this song man?'

I come from a pretty working-class neighborhood in Chicago. Hard work was just expected of you. It wasn't some noble thing you did; it was a prerequisite. It's what a man did. You get up, you put on your boots, and you work hard. We've lost a lot of that, I'm afraid.

In my day you didn't speak until spoken to.

I'm sure that is a reason why young people occasionally bash up old people - because the ages don't mix any more.

I remember when I was a younger cat, I always thought the veteran guys talked too much.

You take a 30-year-old. To him, history began the day he was born. He doesn't know how cold it was 70 years ago unless he's told. He doesn't care. He thinks what's happening now is either the best or the worst, whatever it is, ever. Everybody thinks that.

It's old white ladies, old black ladies, old black men, who don't even listen. Everyone else, everyone who understands, likes Snoop Dogg. They like my music.

There are a lot of complaints by the older generation about the lack of action in this generation. My retort: give these people something to be engaged in. Cutting a check is not engaging.

For years I've been hearing 20-somethings say they don't expect Social Security to be around when they hit 65. Eventually, I came to realize that they really mean that they just don't expect to be 65. Or 40. Neither did I, when I was 22.

The young have to kill the old. The young, if they want to achieve their own platform, have to diminish the reputations of the ones that have gone before. That's how life works.

Confucius would give his seat to an old woman. Communist cadres, on the other hand, took the best seats and called it a cultural revolution.

I think there's a disconnect between political leaders and young voters around a lot of things related to the private sector. For example, a lot of politicians continue to attack big banks. While I'm not a defender of big banks, my sense is younger voters have had generally pretty good experiences with banks.

My parents are Republicans, and I'm not.

My parents were first-generation immigrants. My mum wore a sari but at school and as a teenager and in my 20s I wanted to fit in.

The young people think the old people are fools -- but the old people know the young people are fools.

We need to go back to the way it was 30 years ago, when everybody had Grandma and Grandpa, and we were willing to pass moral judgments about right and wrong.