Quotes about Generational Guilt

Diane Kruger

I don't think my generation carries the weight of World War II anymore. But I've got to tell you, even if we don't really talk about it, we get reminded constantly by other people or other countries. I get offered a World War II movie at least once a week just because I speak German and was born there. I have always stayed away from it because I didn't want to be put into that box.

Tony Judt

My generation those who were students in the late 60s was always, in the words of the Who, talking about our generation. That's what we thought of ourselves, as the most important thing since sliced bread. And the "we" that we meant was really the Western Europeans and American generation. And as I think back I suppose I have a sense of guilt on behalf of my generation, a sense that we were terribly provincial and didn't understand the really important stuff that was going on in Eastern Europe.

Thomas Sowell

Have we reached the ultimate age of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they are doing today?

Charles Francis Adams Sr.

We the children of the third and fourth generations are doomed to pay the penalties of the compromises made by the first.

The compromises were in regard to slavery. The founding fathers – the first generation of Americans could not resolve the slavery issue. In order to get the Southern States into the original union, the Northern states had to make very unpalatable compromises that in effect gave Southern states much more political power than their numbers would entitle them to. In addition, they agreed not to even discuss slavery in Congress for many years. The institution grew worse and the third and fourth generations of Americans were at each other’s throats over slavery finally culminating in the Civil War.

Dean Koontz

Those who wish to punish the current and future generations for the inequities of a generation long gone, and who equate justice with revenge, are the most dangerous people in the world.

Giulio Andreotti

Aside from the Punic Wars, which I was too young for, I have been blamed for everything.

The Punic Wars were wars of Ancient Rome. Most chief executives of democracies tend to get blamed for almost everything that is not ideal. However, most of them tend to take credit for anything good that happens whether or not they had anything to do with it.

Camille Paglia

Every one of my generation who preached free love is responsible for AIDS.

Paglia was an anti feminist.

Adam Driver

I've got weird conflicting feelings about my generation.

Eleanor Roosevelt

This younger generation is paying in many cases, for the sins of its elders.

She was referring to the European children in World War II.

Gary Lineker

Feel ashamed of my generation. We've let down our children and their children.

Doug Larson

The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.

Rush Limbaugh

We are watching people who've been educated in the public school system and in colleges for the last 25 or 30 years become adults. They're getting jobs as TV commentators and journalists and writers and editors and producers in the media. And we're simply seeing the product of what they've been taught. And they so hate what they've been told is America's history and past that they want everybody to know they disagree with it and they've got nothing to do with it, and they had nothing to do with it, and don't blame them.

Jeremy Paxton

My generation have had it good, and I am really troubled by what we have done with it.

T. E. Lawrence

Isn't it true that the fault of birth rests somewhat on the child? I believe it's we who led our parents on to bear us, and it's our unborn children who make our flesh itch.

Conor Oberst

Men with purple hearts carry silver guns and they will kill a man for what his father has done. But what my father did, I don't live it: no, I am not him.

Tad Williams

Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.

Richard Eyre

Maybe we slip so easily into blaming our parents - you're perpetually a child and they're perpetually a parent and you long to balance the equation, but it can only be balanced posthumously.

Margaret Thatcher

The application of collective guilt, running from one generation to another, is a dangerous doctrine which would leave few modern nations unscathed.

Franz Kafka

Ours is a lost generation, it may be, but it is more blameless than those earlier generations.

Bruce Springsteen

You're born into this life paying for the sins of somebody else's past.

Generational Guilt Quotes